A TIGHT SQUEEZE;
OR,
THE ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN,
WHO, ON A WAGER OF TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS,
UNDERTOOK TO GO FROM NEW YORK TO
NEW ORLEANS IN THREE WEEKS,
WITHOUT MONEY,
AS A PROFESSIONAL TRAMP.
By "STAATS."
BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM.
1879.
COPYRIGHT,
1879,
By George M. Baker.
All Rights Reserved.
Stereotyped by C. C. Morse & Son,
Haverhill, Mass.
CONTENTS.
A TIGHT SQUEEZE.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRODIGAL AND THE WAGER.
"Wasson, what is a tramp?"
"Dunno."
"Cleveland, what is a tramp?"
No answer.
"Wasson, accommodate me, if you please, by introducing the extremity of your boot to Mr. Cleveland."
"Ouch! What in thunder are you kicking me for, Wasson?"
"I'm not kicking you; extremes meet, my boy, and there was a natural repulsion. Hough wants to know what a tramp is!"
"How do I know! Ah! here comes Smythe; he will tell you."
"Ah, Smythe, my boy, just in time! Wasson don't know any thing, and Cleveland won't tell what he does know; what's a tramp? There now—that's a good fellow—don't open your mouth so; you'll injure your neck,—just tell me all you know about them."
"What's a which? Tramp!"
"Don't be a poll parrot, Smythe. Tell me what they are. You've been to college and learned to row, and box, and play base ball, and ought to know nearly every thing. Here I am continually reading about them. Every paper you pick up is full of them. Tramp, tramp, TRAMP, from one end of the paper to the other. There is not a chicken purloined off a roost; a man killed; a house fired; a train ditched; virtue outraged, vice embellished, or deviltry of any kind perpetrated, but this omnipresent scape-goat of the nineteenth century appears to be at the bottom of it all. Now I want to know what a tramp is."
"I am sorry that I cannot enlighten you, Hough, but—"
"But," exclaimed Wasson, interrupting Smythe, "if I am not very much mistaken, here comes a gentleman who can!" And as the lawn gate swung to its place, with a clang of the latch, there appeared walking up the gravelled walk, a being, whose every square inch of superficial surface indicated a bona fide, unadulterated specimen of the genus vagabond.
A frock coat,—guiltless of buttons, (save the two in the rear, where they were of no earthly use)—with half a frock gone, and the remainder of the garment mottled like unto the celebrated garment that got Joseph in a hole, was fastened at the neck with a glittering horse-shoe nail. A pair of pants, fantastically fringed with ragged ends about their extremities, higher up bore the brands of many a camp-fire. Their original color had long since struck to the over-powering allied forces of wind and weather, mud and grease. In a landscape they might have looked a subdued maroon, etched with lampblack. Below the fantastic fringe work appeared a pair of feet encased in a boot and a shoe. The shoe had evidently seen better days, and seemed to shrink with humiliated pride from the forced companionship of the boot, which was a plebeian of the Stogie family. The shoe was long, narrow and pointed. The boot was coarse, thick and stubby. The toe of the boot had an air-hole in it, extending clean across the upper. The shoe was intact, and had a brass buckle the size of a door plate, which give it an air of fallen greatness. But the boot was in proud possession of a heel, while the shoe had none, equalizing matters. In glaring contrast to this tatterdemalion attire, the hat, that completed the picture, was a new straw affair, and looked like a bright, fresh, shingle roof, clapped on a very dilapidated, old building. The face beneath the hat was round and plump, very dirty, quite keen, frescoed with tobacco-juice and embossed with a short, stumpy beard. As the figure drew nigh the group on the lawn, boot, shoe, pants, coat and face seemed to blend into an animated object, while the bran new hat kept calling out, like a side-show man on a fair ground, "Here we are! Now you have us! An epitome of Hard Times! A parody on financial acumen! A caricature on the fat of the land! What aint rags is dirt, and what aint dirt is bugs! We're the remnant of other days! We're the breaking-up-of-a-hard-winter! We're a pariah, a scavenger, an outcast! That's what we are, and we want you to know it. Here's your prodigal for you! Kill your fatted calf of kitchen fag-ends and serve up the banquet on the back door step. Bring out the purple and fine linen of your ragbags. Here's your prodigal, and he's come back hungry!"
But though the hat said this, as plain as a hat could, the figure beneath the hat spoke quite differently. Having, with a faltering step and a pronounced limp in the shoe foot, approached the four gentlemen who were enjoying their after dinner cigars on the lawn, the figure with a keen, swift glance took an inventory of each person before him, and then pulling off the new hat—to the great joy of a lot of hair that appeared relieved from the constraints of good society—it said, in a mumbling voice:
"Gentlemen, this is the saddest moment of my life. I am no professional beggar, but the victim of misfortunes, and reduced from comfort to my present state of want by calamities over which I had no control. If you could give me some assistance it would be a great blessing to me, and a noble act for you; for I have not had a bite to eat for four days, and my clothes would drop off of me with starvation if they were not falling off from raggedness."
"Four days!" exclaimed all.
"Four days," solemnly reasserted the figure.
"And you still live!" said Hough.
"I still live," returned the figure, as solemnly as before, but with a shrewd, covert little glance at Hough accompanying the answer.
Wasson noticed the glance, and laughed. Cleveland looked up and the prodigal greeted him with a benignant smile. Smythe withdrew his hands from their repose in his pockets, and, with open mouth, gazed first at the patrician shoe, then at the plebeian boot, then at the subdued, maroon colored, landscape pants, then at the skirtless coat, and at last fastened his attention on the fascination of the brilliant, galvanized-iron, horse-shoe nail.
"Are—are you a—Tramp?"
"No, Sir!" emphatically and indignantly replied the prodigal.
"Then we're lost!" exclaimed all four, and Hough continued, "Had you been a tramp I'd have given you a dollar."
The prodigal looked surprised—a trifle suspicious. For the first time in his life he found his vagabondage quoted at a premium.
"Gentlemen," he said, "pardon me if my native modesty prompted me to deny the truth. I will confess that, having spent my substance in assisting the miseries of others, I am, through the fault of my own generosity and moral rectitude, at last brought to that sad phase of mortal existence comprehended by the name "tramp." I am a tramp—and I do not say it boastingly—; Heaven forbid!" And with a smile of ineffable sweetness, in which dirt and "native modesty" were harmoniously blended, the prodigal meekly folded his hands and rolled his eyes skywards.
"Found, at last!" exclaimed all.
The incidents of this chapter occurred one sunny August afternoon, on the lawn in front of Smythe's summer cottage on Long Island Sound, not far from the lovely little village of Greenwich.
Smythe's cottage was a pretty little piece of carpenter work in the Swiss chatelet style—so delightfully expensive and romantic.
Algernon Smythe was the son of his father. A clear understanding of this matter is necessary inasmuch as the ancestral Smythes bore the name of Smith, and the one immediately preceding Algernon had his "Smith" decorated with the prefix Josiah. Josiah Smith drifted away from the cobble stones of Connecticut—where the Smith family had long been at warfare with the rocks about the possession of a few acres of sterile, sorrel-trodden, ground,—at an early age, and found his way to New York City. With him came the customary solitary shilling. But this Smith shilling was an inflationist. It swelled itself into houses and lots, and stocks and bonds, and shaved notes and fore-closed mortgages, and fifty per cent. premiums on seven per cent. loans, and kept itself so busily employed that when Josiah Smith retired from active life and took up a permanent residence in Greenwood, his only son and heir found himself sole master of a million of money. This was too much wealth to be comfortably worn by the name of Smith. Why, Algernon could remember when he was a little fellow, sanding sugar and dusting spices in his father's store, familiar little boys,—who were manœuvering for raisins,—used to affectionately call him "Smiffy!"
As a consequence when Algernon returned from Paris (Pahree he called it) he no longer intruded the private "i" into the public eye, but put a "y" in place of it. Then, that his name might be parted in the middle,—to match his hair,—he tapered off the "i"-less creation with an "e"; adopted a coat of arms; selected a motto; wanted to know if Connecticut was not somewhere in Massachusetts "you know"; always said brava! at the opera; and bought him a yacht!
Of the other guests at the cottage; Mr. Hough was the relative appendage of a City Savings Bank. He drew $3,500 per annum from the bank and several thousand from other sources. Mr. Wasson was generally supposed to be an artist. He was always going to have a picture finished for the next exhibition. "A thing that Church or Bierstadt might be proud of." Meanwhile a doting father, who, in a distant Massachusetts town, had first made shoes on his own knees, but now made them on the knees of some five hundred of his fellow men, kindly furnished him with a liberal means of subsistence until his profession was established on a paying basis.
Benjamin Cleveland was a young fellow, but little more than twenty-three. His mother had belonged to an old Boston family.
When Ben was ten years old his widowed mother died leaving him to the tender care of his uncle, with a legacy of twenty thousand dollars. By means of this inheritance he had obtained liberal educational advantages,—attaining his majority shortly after graduating (without any honors) at Yale. (Bostonians take honors at Harvard.) After leaving college he diligently applied himself to the problem of life. He had determined upon making his mark in the world. Nearly all young men do so determine. The "mark" up to the opening of this narrative was neither a very prominent or promising one. On his twenty-first birth-day his uncle, who neither understood or sympathized with him,—in fact rather disliked him,—paid into Ben's hands $15,450, the remainder of the legacy left by his mother, and bade him "God speed";—a fashion some people have of shifting on to God's shoulders responsibilities that belong on their own. For a couple of years Ben enjoyed himself looking around among his fellow men, and at the age of twenty-three had $10,400 left to his bank account. He was fond of good living, fond of adventure, fond of sport, fond of being his own master, fond of a congenial laziness, and fond of every thing pertaining to good health save hum-drum work, and money-making by the "plod" process. He could lie on his back and build castles in the air all day long. But it is doubtful if he would have undertaken the exertion of going twenty rods to get one of the foundation stones to commence one of his castles with. He was something of a dreamer. Not much of a doer. He ignored the past; enjoyed the present; neglected the future.
Several moments elapsed in silence, while the lawn party surveyed the rara-avis before them. The prodigal was the first to speak. Extending his hand toward Hough, he suggestively remarked, "Where are you, boss?"
"Here is your dollar," replied Hough, presenting him one; "you have earned it, my friend, by your truthfulness. Now, my friend, tell me what a tramp is?"
"Why, a tramp's a tramp," replied the prodigal.
"Concise, if not lucid," remarked Wasson.
"Yes, but what are they, who are they, where are they, what do they do and where do they go?" persisted Hough.
The prodigal quietly picked a gravel stone out of the gaping toe of the boot, and answered, "They're tramps; that's what they are. Dead-brokes; bums; beats; codjers; hand-out solicitors; cross-tie sailors; free-lunch fiends; centennial rangers; square-meal crusaders! They're everywhere, they do every thing, and go all over. They're the great American travellers of the nineteenth century. Explorers. Progressionists. Agrarians. I'm one of 'em myself, I am! I'm just from New Orleans, and going to Boston," and the prodigal stopped to request a donation of tobacco.
"But where do they live?" asked Wasson.
"Great Blazes! They live where they eat! What a question!" And the prodigal completely annihilated poor Wasson by rolling his eyes upon him in supreme astonishment.
"Yes, but what do they eat? You know they must eat, or they would not live;" and Smythe felt that he had cornered him.
"True for you sir. Well they eat mostly at different places. When in New York some of them like to stop at the Astor, and others again prefer rooming in the lumber piles and taking their meals at Delmonico's. The Fifth Avenue is good enough for me though;" and he smiled upon Smythe, and Algernon opened his eyes and mouth to their fullest extent.
"Don't you ever work? Do you never care to earn money at labor?" asked Wasson.
"Work! Labor! Me! I'm not used to it, but I don't stand back from it on that account. No sir. I love to work. Do you know of any body that wants a hand to help cut ice, or can strawberries, or take astronomical observations? If you do, tell me, for I'm their man. Work! I adore it!" and his face expressed his adoration.
"How long did it take you to come from New Orleans?" asked Hough.
The prodigal studied a moment, and then replied, "I left New Orleans on the 20th of last month. I made St. Louis in eight days and it's taken me two weeks and a trifle more to come from St. Louis here."
"Why, that is over one hundred miles a day! You're a fast walker," said Hough.
"Walk! Who said anything about walking? Not much. I walked when I felt like it, and I rode when I felt like it."
"You had money, then?" asked Wasson.
"Money!" exclaimed he of the maroon pants, disdainfully. "Money! Nary red. What did I want of money. Any fool can travel with money. I beat my way!" and a look of conscious pride illumined his face.
"Came from New Orleans here in three weeks, without any money!" And the magnitude of the undertaking so overwhelmed Mr. Smythe that he viewed the tramp as a second Humboldt.
"Step around to the kitchen and tell them to give you something to eat."
"No, I'm obliged to you, stranger. I just had two squares and three hand-outs, and I couldn't eat another morsel. I'm sorry, but such is the fact," replied the prodigal to the utter neglect of his assertion that for four days he had not tasted food.
When Wasson reminded him of it, he coolly remarked that it was true enough, and arose from his having a terrible toothache that prevented his tasting any thing.
"I must tear myself from you, gentlemen," he continued. "Time is precious, and although I enjoy your society, I must not neglect business. I'm much obliged for the dollar, mister. I'll spend it usefully and judiciously. Ta, ta!" and with a free and easy wave of his hand, the tramp turned and walked jauntily down the gravelled walk without the slightest sign of the limp he entered with.
After his departure Hough broke out in a boisterous fit of hilarity.
"That's a tramp!" he exclaimed. "We have seen the elephant, now, gentlemen, what do you think of him?"
"What a supreme amount of chic!" said Smythe, whom, it will be remembered, had been to Paris.
"Grand! Glorious! It's a fortune to him!" replied Hough, feigning to be lost in admiration. And Cleveland said, meditatively,
"Three thousand miles in three weeks without a cent! By Jove!"
But Wasson rejoined that he did not believe a word of it.
"It can't be done," said Smythe, positively. "No man could do it. I couldn't do it myself!"
"Yes it can be done," cried Cleveland, "whether you could do it or not. I could do it."
"You!"
"Yes, me!"
"I'd be willing to give you three months, and wager that then you could not. You'd starve to death in three days, and commence telegraphing us to come and bring you home before you crossed New Jersey," said Smythe, contemptuously deriding the idea of Cleveland's undertaking the feat.
"Don't be too sure about that, Smythe," retorted Cleveland, warming up. "What man has done, man can do. If that fellow came from New Orleans here in a little over three weeks without a cent, I can go from here to New Orleans in the same time on a like amount of money. I'll wager ten thousand dollars I can do it!" And Mr. Benjamin Cleveland arose to his feet and nodded his head in an aggressive manner, though he had not the remotest idea his challenge would be accepted, and only made the boast to support his assertion. Great then was his surprise—and a surprise not untinctured with consternation, when Smythe quickly replied, "I take the bet. Hough, Wasson, you heard Ben. It's a bargain. When will you start, Cleveland?"
But Ben courageously backed his assertion by quickly replying,
"To-morrow!"
"Pshaw! Cleveland, don't make a fool of yourself," spoke up Wasson. "Even if that fellow did really do as he says he did, remember, he is a professional tramp, and you would be but a novice, at best. You will lose your money, sure."
"I'm not urgent about the matter, only I do not like a man to be so positive about a thing he knows nothing of. You can draw the wager if you wish, Ben," said Smythe.
The manner in which he said it, however, nettled Ben, and though he had made his wager thoughtlessly, and without a consideration of the humiliations, privations, and hardships embraced in the proposed feat, he refused to retract.
"No, Smythe ... I don't take water. The bet is made. Let it stand."
There was a peculiar stubbornness in Ben's nature that compelled him after having made a boast to carry it out. Besides, the proposition was attractive from its startling novelty. It was an excitement his nature craved. In the quick communion of his mind the following thoughts resolved themselves into argumentative forces. "I'm a worthless, shiftless, good-for-nothing fellow anyway. I'm not rich enough to support the life I would like to lead, and I know nothing about 'money-making.' I need a good, practical knowledge of the world more than any thing else in it. A good shaking up. How to obtain it I don't know. There are undoubtedly thousands of channels open, but they are hidden from me. I have $10,400. If I lose my wager, I am young and the world is before me. If I win, I'll have enough to take me to Europe and see the sights for a couple of years. At all events, there are none interested save myself. I am alone in the world; none dependent on me, I'm dependent on none. Responsible to no one for my acts,—none to console a misfortune—nor to share a triumph. I'll go!"
And go he did.
By the terms of the wager, duly drawn up that evening, Cleveland was to start from the City Hall, in New York City, at six o'clock in the afternoon of the 10th of September, without money or any thing of value on his person. In this condition he was to make his way to St. Louis and from there to New Orleans, at which last named city he was to arrive, (and make known his arrival by a telegram from the St. Charles Hotel,) at, or before ten o'clock, A.M., City Hall time, October the 2d, making the tramp in twenty-one days from New York, with four hours grace on the 2d of October, thrown in at the suggestion of Hough. It was further stipulated that at no time while performing the feat, should he appeal for aid to friends, or use the influences of relatives or name, either by reference or application, to assist him. To recapitulate:—Benjamin Cleveland was to make his way from New York to New Orleans, via St. Louis, in three weeks, as a penniless, professional TRAMP!
CHAPTER II.
THE START.
On the 10th of September, the four friends had a final meeting at a sumptuous little dinner, given at the Fourteenth Street Delmonico's, by Smythe. At three o'clock in the afternoon the party broke up, with one last toast to the success of our friend's undertaking.
As the hands of the City Hall clock pointed the hour of six that evening, Smythe, Hough, and Wasson, with a number of friends who had been informed of the wager, shook hands with Ben on the steps of the City Hall and bade him bon voyage. A minute after, when the hives of the great metropolis were turning loose their human bees, and the streets were swarming with released humanity, homeward bound, Benjamin Cleveland walked down Courtlandt Street, with his hands in his empty pockets—feeling as he never felt before in all his life—A TRAMP!
Reader were you ever "broke"? Do you remember ever to have found yourself without money and without the possibility of getting it? If so, you will not surely have to tax your memory to recall the circumstance. The feeling of utter helplessness you then experienced will be indelibly stamped on your mind—fresh and green for a life time. You were in the world, yet not of it. You were a part and parcel of humanity, yet held nothing in common with it. Your mind wandered from subject to subject, and from proposition to proposition, in a dazed, uncontrolled manner that left your physical nature without a guide. How empty every thing seemed. All you met appeared to look right into your pockets and discover the horrible truth. The commonest mortal with a home and an occupation became a prince of peace and plenty in your eyes. And then the ever occurring, never answered, eternally harassing question that was constantly forcing itself upon you in a thousand shapes, "What shall I do?" You truly felt how small, petty and insignificant a thing man is without money. A nonentity; a cipher; a NOTHING! A shadow of existence—an effigy of immortality. Then the desperate thoughts that came ploughing along, tumbling over one another, and frantically appealing to you, for the action you did not possess. Was it not horrible! The dark deeds that pictured themselves to you. The wild promptings to some desperate act. How you hated your fellow man. He was not your fellow man! He was a being belonging to altogether a different sphere than yours. There was no fellowship about it. You were an Ishmaelite, and there was a savage satisfaction in feeling that all the world had its hand raised against you, and yours against all the world. Indeed, to tell the truth, you were not far from desperate deeds. The step from poverty to crime is a short one,—if poverty, itself, be not a crime. A man without money feels an ownership in every one else's property. An ownership where Might becomes the agent of Possession. You felt it. And perhaps it was more a lack of opportunity than inclination that kept you from becoming a criminal. Then do you remember the vows you made, "if you could only once get out of this fix!" The vices you intended to shun; the economy you would practice; the practical and substantial sympathy you would have for all forlorn mortals in your present predicament? The virtues of industry, perseverance and prudence you would religiously follow?
Bah!
"When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be.
When the devil got well, the devil a saint was he."
But perchance you have been "broke" more than once. Several times it may be. Vices, carelessness and a peculiar faculty for getting rid of money have reduced you to the predicament frequently. It has become normal. Do you dread it? No. It has lost its horrors. You have discovered that a man who starves in this country commits suicide. You have also learned how to let your self-respect have a half-holiday. Rags have become familiar to you and wear easily. You have learned to ask that you may receive. To knock at the door that the purse of the party within may be opened unto you. And, withal, there is a sort of freedom in the situation that is agreeable. The conventionalities of society have no claim upon you. You are beholden to no one, and no one to you. As free as the winds to come and go, work or play, sing or howl—in fact, to do as you please! Stocks up or stocks down—it is all the same. Banks may go into liquidation, and insurance companies only insure a loss. What do you care? The president may go to Canada and the cashier to Europe, and all available funds go along with them. Bah! Let the galled jade wince, your withers are unwrung. They have none of your money. The woes of others are your diversion. The Silver Bill a football in the Senate; Congressman Western Windy's anti-tariff resolution; the monthly statement of the National debt; the four per cent. loan;—you pass them by with supreme contempt. If the country were placed on its financial head to-morrow, kicking its heels amid the clouds of bankruptcy, it would be a matter of the most delightful indifference to you. The pinnacle of your hopes, aspirations and desires may be realized in that ecstatic moment, when, filled to the chin at the hospitable hands of some charitable housewife, you recline at ease on the sunny side of a plank and contemplate life through the hazy, somnolent contentment of a full stomach, without a care to oppress you!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, (as the case may be considered by the reader) Benjamin Cleveland illustrated neither of these phases of impecuniosity as he walked down Courtlandt Street.
True, he was moneyless,—and for the first time in his life. But his was a voluntary exile into poverty, and he had the stimulus of an object. There was something to be attained; something to strive for;—an object in life.
And a life without an object is death in masquerade.
One magical name was constantly in his mind. The name of the goal:—New Orleans.
What his sensations were as he walked toward the Jersey City Ferry would be hard to analyze. He felt somewhat sheepish and shame-faced. Every one passing seemed to take a personal interest in him, and say, "Ah, we know you. We know what you are doing. We know you have no money. You are a tramp!" He could have sworn that such were their thoughts. To be sure it was all imagination. They were all doing exactly as he was—thinking of themselves. The world rarely pays any attention to you unless you tread on its toes. Plunge your finger into the ocean—withdraw it—look for the hole! The ocean is the world—the hole yourself. Ben felt queer. The central figure of his thoughts was New Orleans. But the steps between New York and New Orleans were many, and he was but taking the initial one.
While dreaming of the future he suddenly came plump up against the present in the shape of the Jersey City Ferry toll house. Forgetting for the moment the empty character of his exchequer, he entered the gate and thrust his hand in his pocket for the requisite toll.
The pocket was empty!
Blushing at his forgetfulness, and stammering out something to the toll collector about having left all his change at home, Ben retreated from the gate and into the street again.
It was his first check. The first gate on his road. And to tell the truth he felt lost. Here was only two cents standing between himself and $20,000! Ridiculous! Nevertheless a very substantial fact.
For half an hour he loafed up and down the piers of the North River, wondering what he should do. Once it suggested itself to him to go back to his friends and acknowledge the attempt a failure. But he thrust the thought aside as cowardly. Go he would, though he had to swim to the opposite shore, or go up to Albany and walk around the river!
CHAPTER III.
PROFESSIONAL ADVICE.
While Ben reflected upon the majesty and power of two cents, seated on a check post, he was approached by a seedy individual, who had been hovering in this vicinity eyeing him stealthily, for some time.
"Mister," said the stranger, "would you be kind enough to help a man a little. I'm broke, and I'm sick. I have a wife and four children in Philadelphia. I'm a shoemaker by trade, and if I could once get back home, I'd get work; and, on my word and honor I'll send you any money you let me have."
Ben thought of his own utter financial emptiness and smiled. The man thought he doubted his integrity, and hastily promised:
"I'll do it, so help me! I had all my money stolen from me by a man that I befriended, who said he had no place to stop. I've been trying for work for two weeks and a starving to death a doing of it. I'll—"
"Hold on," interrupted Ben, "I am sorry for you but I have not a single cent myself."
The man looked incredulous.
"It is a fact," continued Cleveland. "I want to go to New Orleans, and here I am stopped for want of two cents with which to cross this ferry."
"What, you broke with all them good clothes on!" exclaimed the shoemaker in astonishment.
Ben thought he was dressed very shabbily, having donned the oldest and coarsest suit he owned, but in the eyes of the dilapidated shoemaker he was, undoubtedly, arrayed like unto a lily of the field. He answered however:
"I tell you the actual truth, my friend. I have not one cent myself."
"Have you had any thing to eat? Are you hungry?" asked the shoemaker, thrusting his hand into a breast pocket and producing a package of cold victuals wrapped up in a dirty piece of old newspaper.
Ben looked surprised at this generosity on the part of one who a moment before had confessed himself as starving to death, but refrained from expressing his thoughts as he declined the proffered food.
"You've got along well for chuck, then," remarked the shoemaker, returning the package to his pocket.
Ben had a dim comprehension that "chuck" referred to food, and replied that he was not hungry, adding the information that he was only recently become "broke" and that it was the first time in his life such a predicament had overtaken him; whereupon the shoemaker looked at him with commiseration. Indeed he appeared so to sympathize with Ben that that young gentleman was touched, and said:
"I'm very sorry I have not something to give you, for I know how a man in your position must feel, having a wife and four children at a distance and no money to reach them with." But this was not received graciously by the knight of St. Crispin, who looked at Ben suspiciously and gruffly said:
"What are you giving us;—lumps?"
Ben was at a loss for the meaning of "lumps" but answered pleasantly:
"I was speaking of your family; your wife and four children in Philadelphia." This was said so honestly that the man's face cleared up in a moment, and he broke into a coarse laugh.
"Philadelphia be blowed! This town's too fat to leave. Big free lunches. Five cent hang ups. Best town to codge in you ever struck! Give you a reg'lar sit down here. Philadelphia you only get a back door hand-out. Down there they allus think you're after the spoons and cutlery. Don't care a durn what you are after here. All of 'em after sumthin' themselves. All politicians here. Tell 'em you belongs to the Ward. Find out what ward you're in first. Give you big squares. Sometimes wealth—and clo'es. Give you a copper cent in Philadelphia, and make you go before a justice of the peace and swear you won't spend it for drink. Here, don't care a cuss what you spend it for. Philadelphia the lady of the house comes down to see you and ask questions. Here, the servant girl's boss! If she's Irish, say you're a Fenian. If she's Dutch, tell her you've got a sauerkraut wife. If she's a nigger, just tell her you're hungry. Go striking in Philadelphia and they'll hand you over to the police. Strike a man here and he's white! Give him a stiff on some good trade. But look out you don't get caught up. I struck a man this mornin' and give him that I was a blacksmith. Thunder! What you suppose! He took me about six blocks, up to where he lived over his own shop, and give me a big sit down. Then he took me down to the shop and told me he'd give me work for the next three months, and wanted me to go right to business! I pulled off my coat and let on that I'd struck oil at last, an' then, of a sudden, told him I'd a keyster down at a hang up with a leather apron in it, an' I'd have to go after it. He wanted to lend me an apron, but I told him I was so used to this one that I could not work without it nohow.
"You see you must be careful who you strike. But I s'pects you're a fresh one. Now take my advice: unless there's big inducements taking you to New Orleans, don't you leave this town. You're well dressed, an' you look well. Why, with those togs on, and that light over-Benny you can beat the restaurants and lunches for the next twelve months! Tramping aint what it used to be. It's overdone. There's too many working at the business. There's no money in it. You stay here."
Though Ben did not more than half understand what the whilom shoemaker had been saying, he nevertheless realized that he was conversing with a professional parasite,—one of those social excrescences, so many of which are to be found in all large cities. He thanked him, however, for the kind interest He took in his welfare, but reiterated his determination to go to New Orleans.
"Then go by boat. Beat your way on a steamer. Stow away, and when they're off once they can't land you except they run into Havana."
"But I want to go to St. Louis first," said Ben.
"St. Louis is a good town. You hear me! The soup season aint commenced yet. But they set boss free lunches!" And the professional rolled his eyes as he mentioned the delights of the Future Great City.
"I'm much obliged to you for the information, I'm sure," replied Ben. "But what troubles me just at present is to cross this ferry."
"To cross the ferry?"
"Yes."
"Poh! That's the easiest thing in the world. Go give 'em a racket. Go to the wagon gate, I would. The box man's too busy to attend to you. Tell the man there you just had your pocket picked and must get over in time to catch the Elizabeth train. Tell him you'll pay him when you come back in the morning. Your clothes will carry you through." And the shoemaker smiled on Ben's wardrobe approvingly.
"Thanks for your advice; but to be frank, I had rather not tell what is not so."
The eyes of the professional opened to their widest extent.
"Gosh! Where'd you say you were a going? New Orleans! Well, mebbe you'll get there—mebbe not. See here, was that a stiff you was givin' me?"
Ben replied that he did not fully comprehend what a "stiff" might be, but he assured his interlocutor that he was sincere relative to a due regard for the truth.
The shoemaker was evidently puzzled. He could not understand the moral that could prevent a man from attaining a convenience within the reach of a lie. But his astonishment was tinctured with a respect for a virtue he could not comprehend.
"It's all right, I s'pose," he remarked, "but it's too funny for me. You're the first man I ever met that wouldn't tell whatever suited him to get along easy. Why, look-a-here; you go up and tell that gate keeper you're bust, and want to go over. He'll laugh at you. Look on you with contempt. Go tell him you live in Newark, and have just had your pocket picked. He'll respect you, and treat you civilly, whether he believes you or not; ten to one he'll let you over. Lemme tell you somethin' as may be useful to you on your way. There's no premiums for truth, but there's an everlasting lot of chromos goes with good lies. Now if it's agin your conscience to gin the gate keeper a racket, the only other way I know for you to get over is to go up the street a piece and jump a wagon. Gin the driver a good talk, and get him to take you. So long, my friend. I wish you luck. The band's about to play over in the Bowery, an' if I aint on hand in time, some unprincipled vagabond will have my dress-circle seat with a lamppost back. So long!" And shaking Ben by the hand, the shoemaker turned and disappeared up a neighboring thoroughfare.
Ignoring the professional's moral advice, our friend proceeded a short distance from the ferry, and meeting a jovial, round-faced Hibernian, driving a dray, told his desire to go over, and the impecunious position in which he was placed. The driver kindly gave him a lift, and the gate was safely passed. On the ferry, Ben answered the driver's numerous inquiries as explicitly as he thought proper, and quite an acquaintance was struck between them. When the boat had deposited them on the Jersey City side he dismounted, and after thanking the driver was about proceeding on his way, when the latter thrust out a dirty, toil soiled hand, and forced a quarter of a dollar on him. "It aint much, but it'll help yez get a mouthful to eat," and without waiting either protestations or thanks, the man put whip to his team and drove off.
CHAPTER IV.
OUR HERO MEETS HIS DESTINY.
"Well, it is charity," said Ben to himself, "but it is acceptable for all that." He then strolled up the gaslit street,—for it had been dark for some little time—and repeatedly asked himself what would be the next move in the campaign he had undertaken.
The "prodigal" had spoken of riding; how was it to be done? Should he enter a train, take a seat and wait until the conductor put him off? He knew that that manner of proceeding would gain him but a short ride. Perhaps he might tell the conductor a pathetic tale that would so work upon that individual's generosity that he would allow him to continue on the train. Alas, he knew the craft too well to attempt so futile an undertaking. Not that conductors are a hard-hearted class of persons, but their orders are strict, and permitting a free ride would subject them to a peremptory discharge. In fact Ben was lost. At a distance the simple matter of going from place to place looked easy enough of accomplishment, but now that he was brought face to face with the problem its solution became a difficult (indeed he was about thinking an impossible) task. What to do or where to go he knew not. For a time he gazed listlessly into the shop windows, and mechanically strolled along. If he could only meet a tramp, he thought, he would ask him how to proceed; and he kept a sharp lookout for one of the fraternity, but none presented themselves. It soon grew late, and the streets lonely. The pedestrians became fewer and fewer, and the shops, one by one, put up their shutters. Ben thought he had never felt so lonesome in all his life; and he was right. There is no situation in life more lonely, than to be alone in a great city at night fall. In the woods a man has Nature to listen to and commune with. On the prairies there are the stars and the night breeze for companions. But in a metropolis, a stranger among our fellow men, such a wretched, helpless feeling comes over the traveller that his loneliness seats itself, not only on his mind, but on his heart. This feeling was creeping with a dull, heavy tread upon Ben, and he had already commenced to anxiously question himself where he should pass the night that was now surrounding him, when his attention was suddenly aroused by a youthful voice, in a dark side street, close by, crying out:
"Let me alone! Let me alone, I say!" and then a gentle female voice entreating:
"Do not strike the boy, Arthur. Do not beat him. He did not mean to; I am sure he did not!"
"I'll teach you to pick a pocket, you young scoundrel!" exclaimed an angry man; and there followed a blow, and a cry of pain.
By this time Ben, who had accelerated his step, reached the scene of disturbance, and discovered by the dim light that crept from a street lamp, half a block away, a large man grasping a boy by the arm, and holding an uplifted cane, that a young lady was striving to prevent again descending upon the captive. The face of the latter being concealed by an old slouch hat jammed down over his eyes.
In Ben's nature was a strong love of justice. He had ever been a champion of the weak, and an injury inflicted by a strong arm on one incapable of resistance was an outrage on his own sensitiveness, that had involved him in many a rough-and-tumble while a boy at school and college. As the man shook off his fair companion's hand and the cane was about descending again on the shrinking person of the boy, he interposed his arm and caught the blow upon it.
"Don't strike the boy, sir. Please do not hit him. Even if he has done wrong a beating will not improve him." As he thus expostulated with the man he became conscious of a pair of great, glorious, grey eyes, that fairly glowed in the dark, looking gratefully upon him from out the folds of a snowy nubia, and a very melodious voice seconding his own entreaties, with:
"I'm sure you are mistaken, Arthur. This gentleman is right. Pray do not strike the boy again."
But Ben's observations reached no farther, for the man gave him a stinging blow across the face with the cane, exclaiming fiercely:
"Confound your impudence, who asked you to interfere!" The next moment the man lay at length in the gutter, having been sent there by a powerful and well directed blow with which, in the heat of the moment, Ben had resented the indignity received by him.
The next instant he repented such an act in the presence of a lady and turned to apologize, when a warning voice cried, "Look out! He is armed!" and he saw that his opponent had regained his feet and was drawing a weapon from his pocket. What the result might have been, had the man been allowed to use his revolver, is not difficult to surmise. A shot at such close quarters would probably have suddenly terminated Ben's tramp, had not the boy who gave the warning struck the man on the head with a stone before he had an opportunity to use the weapon he was uncovering. The blow was a severe one, and felled him senseless to the pavement.
"Come, come!" cried the boy, "Let us get away from here!"
But Ben would not leave his fallen enemy without ascertaining the extent of his injuries, and he immediately offered his assistance to the young lady, who now stood beside her senseless escort, wringing her hands, and vainly imploring him to arise. He had been only stunned, however, and as Ben stooped over him showed signs of returning consciousness. Attempting to rise to his feet, he found himself still too dazed from the effects of the blow, and would have fallen had not Cleveland supported him.
"I am very sorry this should have occurred, Miss, but realty this gentleman is alone responsible for it," said Ben apologetically.
"Yes," she replied graciously. "No doubt you are right, sir. I do not think the boy intended any wrong, but—but Arthur was ill tempered on account of other matters, and—allowed his anger to vent itself on the first object it came across."
And Ben thought he noticed, that, though nervous from the excitement, she did not appear to evince much sympathy for her companion. The latter soon recovered his senses sufficiently to keep his feet, and supporting himself by the young lady's arm prepared to leave. As he was moving off he turned upon Ben and said, with a malevolent scowl: "I will remember you, sir."
"I trust, miss, you will pardon me for my rudeness," said our hero, addressing the young lady and ignoring her companion. "I am very sorry for what has occurred. Here is his pistol. I hope the next time he draws it, it will be in defence of a more manly action than striking one too small to defend himself." And he handed the revolver to the young lady, who received it with a simple "thank you, sir." Ben lifted his hat courteously, and the fair one returned a smile and an inclination of her head; and the three separated.
Our friend stood watching the retreating figures of the lady and her escort, until they were lost in the darkness, and then, instead of resuming his walk, he leaned against a neighboring wall, while his thoughts continued to follow the owner of the great, glorious, gray eyes in the nubia.
Unconscious of his surroundings, his mind basked in the light of the bewildering glances, and his ears danced to the music of the voice that had proceeded from out the folds of the snowy nubia. Ben had a large circle of young lady acquaintances, and, being a fellow of culture and good looks, was a favorite with the fair sex. Among them might have been numbered many attractive and polished misses, some of whom had treated our hero more than cordially. But for all he retained the same simple feeling of friendship,—and, nothing deeper. There was a latent feeling in the young man's composition that had never been touched until that evening. A wonderful change had now come over him. He felt that she of the nubia was a fragment (and a pretty large one) of his own existence. And it is singular, yet true, should he never again have set eyes upon her, there would have remained for life a tender memory in his heart that nothing could have displaced.
There is many a heart, going about this world to-day, with just such an uncompleted vision, locked up as a sacred secret within.
"Pshaw!" he said to himself, "we probably will never meet again." At the same time there was a small voice, aiding and abetting a sanguine hope, which kept saying: "Yes you will, Ben. Depend upon it, you will, my boy!"
Happening to look up from his musings, he discovered the cause of the recent encounter standing a few feet away, attentively observing him. The lad, finding his presence noticed, approached closer and said in a singularly soft, pleasant voice:
"I thank you ever so much. I chanced to run against that man in the dark, and he called me a thief. I called him a liar. Then he struck me. I'm no thief!"
"Do you know the man?" asked Ben.
There was considerable hesitancy in the boy's manner as he answered: "No—no—I don't know him. But I will, if I see him again, and I won't forget that he struck me, either."
"I wish you knew him," said Ben.
"Why?" asked the other in surprise.
Ben blushed all to himself in the dark, but, reasoning that it was "only a boy," boldly answered:
"I should like to know whom his lady companion is."
"Oh! Is that it!" and the way he said it sounded singular to Ben. "Well, I suppose you live here and will have a chance to find out."
"No, I do not live here. I live in New York."
"Going home to-night?" inquired the lad.
"No," laughed Ben. "I'm going to St. Louis before I go home again."
"To St. Louis! I declare! There is where I'm going myself."
"Perhaps we may travel together," suggested Ben, laughing.
"No fear of that," replied the other. "I guess my way of travelling wouldn't suit you. I go in a Pullman Palace box car," and the boy laughed merrily.
"A what car?"
"A Pullman Palace Box!" returned the boy. "I'm going to beat my way."
At last, thought Ben, I see a way out of the woods!
"Are you indeed! That is identically the way I am going to travel. Do you think you can get to St. Louis?"
"Get there!" exclaimed the patron of the palace box disdainfully. "Get there! Well, I should say, I have just made it from Boston here, and I made it from Montreal to Boston. I know all the ropes, now;—sure as you live, I do. And are you broke too?"
"Yes," replied Cleveland; "and that is not the worst of it. I never was broke before, and, to tell the truth, I'm a novice at beating my way, and do not know just how to do it."
"Why, so far as that goes, beating one's way is like any other kind of work. It is work. To be sure it's not quite so pleasant as paying your way, and you have to put up with a good bit, but if you have the nerve you may rest assured that you will get to your destination all right. As we are going the same way, suppose we go together?"
"Agreed!" said Ben, glad to have fallen in with some one posted in the vagabond life he was about entering upon.
"Then we're pards. Here's my hand on it!" and Ben grasped a warm, soft hand in his and the compact was duly signed and sealed.
"Now, partner," said the boy, "as you say you are new to the business, let me have the direction of affairs until you get your hand in. We will have to stay here for to-night, because the yards and tracks are watched so close that it is next to impossible to jump a train going out of here. But to-morrow we will foot it down to Elizabeth, and make some side track below that town, and jump a train in the evening. To-morrow night, by this time, we can make Philadelphia. That will be a good time to jump some coal flats and get out on the Central road."
"You speak as though you had been over the route," said Ben in admiration of the practical manner in which his new acquaintance handled the subject. He felt a great relief in having found a companion who could tell him something about travelling in the new style, not at that time being aware of the fact that had he followed the railroad he could have picked up a score of free-riders going in any direction his fancy may have desired.
The boy, however, denied having ever been over the road before.
"No, no," he said, "when you are on a tramp you learn to post yourself on these matters. It's easy done;—see here! Here's the public and employee's time-tables of all the roads that come into New York City." And he showed Ben a pocket-full of railroad time-tables. "With these you can keep posted just how the trains run, where there are good jumping places, tanks, switches, and so on. All the bums carry them. They are their war maps. At the next convention the tramps ought to vote a set of thanks to the railroad companies for printing these things for them. But now let's go to bed. Have you any wealth?"
"I have just twenty-five cents," replied Ben acknowledging the quarter given him by the teamster.
"Good enough. Keep your money for tobacco. Are you hungry?"
"No."
"All right then. We will get some breakfast before we start in the morning. Now let us go to bed. I've got the boss hangup. It's a shed in a lumber-yard. There's lots of nice clean boards in it. You must go quiet, or the watchman will see us getting in, though, after you get in the shed he never comes by that way. Come on."
Ben followed the boy to a lumber-yard, and having scaled a padlocked gate, they were about to make for the shed, which was dimly discernible in the distance, when the quick ear of the lad detected footsteps. Quietly he led Ben into a recess, made by projecting piles of lumber, and then the two crouched down, awaiting the appearance of the person approaching. That individual shortly came up in the shape of a man—and a very ragged one—as seen through the starlight. Behind him limped a comrade carrying a small bundle. They were outside of the fence, and halted when they arrived at the gate.
"Let's get in here, Billy," said the foremost in a low voice.
"Oh, thunder, Peters! My foot's too sore to climb that there fence, and if a dog got after us on the other side, I'd be gone up. Let's go to the Station-house and have a good-night's rest."
"I tell you I aint agoing to the police station, like a slouch," replied he addressed as Peters.
"Oh, you're so durned high toned!" muttered 'Billy.' "There's as good men goes to the station as you be, and if you get over into that yard somebody may catch you and hand you over, and then you'd go up for a vag for sixty days, mebbe. I wish we'd a camped out in the country and not come in town to-night."
"We had to come in to get some snipes. You said you was a dying for a smoke. Come now, and shin over." And 'Peters' commenced scaling the gate, when Ben's companion called out:
"Get away from this yard, you scoundrels, or I'll give you over!"
A sudden fall from the gate, was followed by a hasty shuffling of feet, and the boy said to Ben:
"All right, now. We have got rid of them. This is my hangup, for I discovered it, and I don't want any more lodgers. Come on."
When they were safely stowed away on the planks under the shed, Ben asked:
"Were those tramps?"
"Yes," replied the other; "peach-plucks, I s'pose. The country's full of them."
"What are 'peach-plucks'?"
"Fellows that tramp up and down Delaware and Jersey during the peach season. They get work at from fifty cents to a dollar a day, picking peaches. Sleep out on the ground and live on corn-dodgers and sow-belly. It's a star time with the bums, and I suppose there's five thousand or more of them ramble through the peach country. You see work aint heavy and they can have all the peaches to eat they want."
"But I should think that even at those small wages they might earn enough to keep them until they found better employment," said Ben.
"They're not after employment; they're out for an airing, and only work two or three days at a time. After the peaches play out, lots of 'em strike off through the country for the Wisconsin hop yards, where men and women pick in the fields together, and dance all night. It is the life they like. Money's no object. Let us go to sleep so that we can get up early." And he lay down at full length on the boards as though they were a bed of down. Ben followed his example; but the strangeness of his new position kept him long awake, thinking thoughts that had never before visited his mind. Once he gave his companion a gentle push, and asked:
"Boy, what is your name?"
"Tommy."
"Tommy, what are 'snipes'?"
"Cigar butts!" and Tommy laughed a sleepy little laugh, and was soon thereafter snoring.
Then came the sweet angel Sleep, and wrapped his arms around city and woodland, palace and hovel, police station and lumber pile, and took his weary devotees off on a tour through dreamland.
About two o'clock in the morning, Ben awoke shivering with cold. The damp night air, warm enough in the early evening, had chilled and aroused him. His restlessness startled Tommy who enquired what the matter was.
"Ah, you were not tired enough to sleep sound." And then Tommy showed him how to make a blanket of his coat and vest, by covering up his head with the coat and rolling the other up on the breezy side of him, and in a few moments Ben felt himself quite warm, and again dozed off.
That trick of making a blanket out of his coat and covering up his head so as to retain all the heat of respiration was a valuable one that he often thereafter made use of.
CHAPTER V.
OUR HERO EATS THE BREAD OF CHARITY.
Bright and early, on the following morning, our two tramps deserted the lumber-yard, and having found a pump, both performed their morning ablutions; Ben feeling a trifle stiff in the neighborhood of the spots where his bed rubbed him the heaviest. But relying on Tommy's assertion that he would soon view a clean plank as a positive luxury, he made no complaints.
"And now for breakfast!" said Tom. "Then we will start."
Never before had this matter of breakfast appeared of such magnitude to Ben. It was as natural for him to eat breakfast of a morning as to exist. It is so with thousands of good people. And yet there are many persons in the world who are ofttimes compelled to look upon a matutinal meal as an unattainable luxury, and respect it accordingly.
Tommy's cheerful invitation was somewhat reassuring, however. The two walked on in silence until they were well out in the suburbs of the city, when the boy turning to Ben, said:
"This will do. Now you are hungry, I'll warrant."
He did not deny the soft impeachment. Indeed his well regulated interior had clamored loudly the previous evening at the enforced fast imposed upon it, and was now sternly calling upon its provider to do his duty, and his whole duty, like a man.
"Listen to me," instructed Tommy. "You are young at cadging and I will have to give you some points."
Ben not only gave an attentive ear but he took a good look at his companion in the broad daylight. The boy might have been fourteen or fifteen years of age; a round, plump little fellow, with a merry face, and sparkling, hazel eyes shaded by long, black lashes. There was something girlish in his cheek, it was so round, and smooth, and rosy, without the slightest sign of those capillary advantages that manhood's prime was to decorate it with. An ungovernable mass of curly black hair straggled from under a well worn slouch hat that had bronzed beneath sun and storm, and become limp and shapeless in its career of pillow and basket. When Tommy spoke his voice had a clear, silvery ring, quite pleasant to the ear; and when he laughed he showed a dazzling set of teeth. Such was Ben's new companion. He looked as though he might be a good boy who would do many a bad trick.
"Listen," he said. "We must get breakfast right off. You take that side of the street, and I'll take this. Go to the back doors and tell them any sort of a tale that comes handy; only don't forget to say, every time, that this is the first time you have ever had to ask for such a thing in your life, and that you scorn to accept it as a charity, but want to earn what you eat, and you would like to saw wood enough for your breakfast. But before you knock be sure you look around and see that they use coal. We have no time to fool away manufacturing firewood. Now go on, and we will meet down at the corner of the next block; the one that gets there first, to wait for the other."
Of all forlorn mortals, Benjamin Cleveland felt at that moment the most forlorn. He could have charged a battery, where there was no chance of coming back alive, cheerfully. He could have ventured any desperate deed that required mere physical courage; but to go into a house and beg for something to eat,—he could not! His heart jumped to his throat with all the nervous energy that attends physical fear in men differently constituted from our hero. Gate after gate was passed, he persuading and promising himself that the next one should surely be entered. Once he did stop with his hand on a latch, but chancing to look up at the house he saw a little boy eyeing him from an upper window, and retreated completely vanquished. It required all his stubbornness and constant thoughts of New Orleans to prevent his giving up the projected "tramp" there and then, and acknowledging himself a failure. What was $20,000 to such humiliation!
But another course of reasoning came to his aid: "You call it pride, Ben; but are mistaken. It's lack of nerve, my boy," said this new logician. "There is as much nerve required in facing humiliations as there is in facing a battery. More, sometimes. Physically brave men are plentiful. It is mental bravery that is lacking in you and thousands of others. To be sure it is low. It is humiliating. It is begging. You will be a beggar. But you have an object to attain, and it can only be attained the one way. It is either do it, or surrender!"
This sophistry at last wrought so upon him that closing his eyes upon all surroundings, he made a blind dash at a gate, and without allowing himself time to think hurried around to the mansion's back door, at which he was actually knocking before he fully understood himself, and without once remembering Tommy's injunction to be careful and satisfy himself that there was no obnoxious wood-pile in the vicinity.
A man answered his knock, and all his courage immediately oozed out. If it had only been a woman, he thought, it would have been different. But how could he ask a man for something to eat! He could not, and he did not, but stammering out some irrelevant inquiry about an imaginary Mr. Brown, he blushed and looked decidedly sheepish. The man, eyeing him suspiciously, replied that no Mr. Brown lived there, or in that neighborhood, and shut the door in his face.
Poor Ben made his way to the sidewalk feeling smaller than ever in his life. Truly if the $20,000 is to be earned at this price it will be dear enough; and he had not the heart to make another back door appeal, but walked to the appointed rendezvous, and there awaited Tommy.
That young gentleman shortly appeared, smacking his lips, and looking as well fed and contented as possible.
"I had a splendid breakfast! Mutton chops, hot waffles, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, coffee,—oh my eye, such coffee! Three cups of it! Oh!" and Tommy, his vocabulary unable to furnish him with adjectives to do full justice to the merits of the coffee, rolled his eyes instead, little knowing the misery his bill of fare was giving poor empty stomached Ben.
"What did you have, partner?"
Ben very truthfully remarked that he had had a light breakfast, indeed not much of any thing to speak of.
"Then why don't you go into another house and keep agoing until you're full?" asked Tommy. "Go back where I was and tell them I sent you. There's lots left."
But this proposition was viewed unfavorably by Mr. Cleveland, who remarked that he was not very hungry, (which was false) and that he would purchase a nickel's worth of crackers, which would fill him to repletion.
"Do as you please," replied his companion, "but I advise you not to spend your money foolishly. You can get all the chuck you want, by asking for it, and can save your money for newspapers and tobacco—and (reflectively) hair grease."
Ben persisted in the extravagance of a nickel's worth of crackers, however, and when he had eaten them, felt much better. He also purchased a dime's worth of tobacco, some of which he offered Tommy, who refused the weed.
The two now took to the railroad, and late in the afternoon made a water tank and side track below Elizabeth, where the time table "For employees only," informed them many trains would stop to water and pass, during the night.
On the walk down the track, Tommy had made numerous excursions to houses along the lines for "hand-outs." He met with much success and nearly always returned with something. Sometimes with bread, sometimes bread and meat, and once a lot of soft rice pudding, carefully conveyed in his hat; all of which he shared with Ben, and when they had more than they needed, gave to other tramps whom they met. They passed several of these gentry on their way north-east. At such a meeting, all hands would squat on the rails and a long confab ensue. There were two questions always asked by those they met. One was, "How's 'times' where you fellows come from?" and the other, "How's grub on the road?" All of them professed to be in search of work; which, no doubt, the majority honestly were, but work is at present a very scarce article in the United States.
These tramps either preferred walking, or had been recently "bounced" from trains on which they were stealing rides. Hardly any took to the country roads,—save it might have been in the vicinity of a town,—much preferring the railroads, from which fact they have derived the sobriquet of "cross-tie sailors." Once while Ben was sitting on a pile of ties, awaiting Tommy's return from a foray into a neighboring farm house, he heard his name called, and looking in the direction of the house saw Tom vigorously beckoning him. A plump, kind faced, motherly housewife gave him a pleasant greeting, and on a bench he saw spread an appetizing banquet of bread, butter, milk and apple sauce, to which his little friend was energetically devoting himself. Ben needed no persuasion to follow his example; the good dame, meanwhile, standing by, and condoling with them.
"I have a son at sea, myself," said she, "and Heaven watch over my dear boy! I know not when the fierce winds may shipwreck him among strangers. God, forbid, though. You, young men, should be thankful that it is no worse. And don't forget to thank Him who did it for extending his protecting hand to you."
This was all not quite so lucid as Greek to Ben, who judiciously replied in monosyllables, as he devoured the food. On leaving, their kind hostess presented them with a large package of bread and ham.
When they regained the track, Tommy explained that he had given the good lady "quite a racket." The "racket" proved to be a pathetic tale of shipwreck in which the two tramps had taken a prominent part, having recently landed destitute in New York City, from thence they were making their way on foot to their homes in Baltimore. While Ben could not indorse the moral laxity embraced in the "racket," he nevertheless admired the milk and apple sauce. The bread and ham made them a hearty supper that afternoon, when they had taken to the seclusion of a small grove near the tank and side track. After their repast, Ben was about to remove his boots; for his feet were tired and badly chafed. Tommy advised him not to, stating that it would be better to let his feet "get used to it," and that they would "harden quicker" by allowing his boots to remain on. He took them off, though, and both lay down for a nap to strengthen them for the night's work.
They were soon asleep. Our hero dreamed of New Orleans and its glories. Of bread and milk, a motherly woman and a gruff man. Of gates that would not open, pull them ever so hard; and doors that he battered his knuckles to pieces on without there being a response. But most he dreamed of a pair of great, glorious, grey eyes, that, indeed, had occupied his reflections the major portion of the day.
If Tommy's face indicated the thoughts passing through his mind, his dreams were far from pleasant. He gritted his teeth, and clenched his hands, and muttered hoarsely as he tossed about. Gradually he rolled over on to Ben's outstretched arm. And the arm unconsciously closed around him and drew him to Ben's bosom, on which pillowing his head, the boy slept soundly.
CHAPTER VI.
UNDER THE CYCLOPEAN EYE.
Ben had just knocked at a back door and a man was threatening to set the dogs on him if he did not take himself off, and he was in the midst of eloquent protest, that he was no tramp and was not doing this thing from necessity, when Tommy awoke him, and he started up with his protest but half uttered, to find the night air quite chilly, and countless stars in the coverlet of Earth winking and blinking at him in a most familiar manner.
"Get up," said Tommy. "It is ten o'clock! If you sleep that way much longer you will talk yourself to death."
"Have I been talking in my sleep?" he asked sitting up with a yawn.
"I should say so, indeed," replied Tom. "I've been listening to you for the past half an hour." He did not further state that during the half hour he had bent, like a timid girl, over Ben and kissed him on cheek and forehead—but not on the lips. But such was the fact.
"Come, it's ten o'clock and the freight is about due," said he.
"How do you know what time it is?"
"By my watch, of course. How else?"
"Have you a watch?" asked Ben, in surprise.
"To be sure. A splendid time piece. Been running these thousands of years, and never yet needed repairing. There it is," and he pointed to the Heavens.
"Where?"
"Why up there—the Big Dipper! You can tell time by the handle of it. Now you have learned something. Get up!"
Again on his feet he found himself quite stiff. It appeared to him as though all of his joints were soldered together.
"Oh you will soon get used to that," consolingly reflected Tommy. "Bump your back against a tree and that will shake you limber. Hi! Here she comes! Now for it! Hurry up!" And in the distance was seen the great Cyclopean eye of a locomotive, and the rumble of the approaching train filled the air.
"Hold on Tom! I can't get on my boots," exclaimed Ben, striving to force his swollen feet into them.
"We can't wait, Ben. Come on in your stockings. Carry your boots in your hand. Hurry up! Here she is!"
Thus urged he limped over the rough ground with his boots in his hand.
"Not this side," said Tommy. "Take the other side of the track; they'll see us here. Come, look sharp and get over before the headlight discovers us."
Ben hobbled over the track and both crouched down behind a pile of old rails on the opposite side from the tank. While cowering there the train drew up with a rush, and a roar, and a screeching of brakes, and stopped to fill its own tank.
Scarce had it come to a standstill when three figures glided like shadows from among the cars, and swiftly ran and hid behind the pile of rails where our friends were crouching. One of them observing them asked, in a hoarse whisper:
"Goin' to jump her?"
"Yes," whispered Tom in reply. "What's the show?"
"None at all," returned the other. "She's a loaded train. Every box locked. We've been making it on the drawheads from Newark. That's your only show."
Tom uttered an exclamation of disappointment.
"Ben, can you ride bumpers?"
"I think so. What are they?"
"Bumpers. Drawheads. The coupling between the cars. Here's three beats riding drawheads and they say it's our only show. If you think you can, we will try it."
Our hero answered that he had no experience in the business, but was willing to make the attempt.
"It's death, to fall," said Tommy; and then the boy cogitated a moment, and whispered:
"It won't do. You couldn't do it. Not in your stocking feet anyway. We'll have to let this train go."
At this time the whistle sounded "off brakes," and the engine wheels began to revolve. As the train got under headway, the three figures stealthily stole forth, and plunging between the cars, the long screeching, grinding chain of wheels, appear to roll over them and grind them out of existence.
Not so, however. As the train sped away, each of the three was dangling on that narrow, precarious, bumping, jerking little platform, made by the links and connecting drawheads of the cars. A most dangerous place truly, and many a tramp has left them for Eternity. A jolt! The foot slips! A yell! And all is over. The tramp is finished.
But Ben discovered before he reached New Orleans that the bumpers were not the most dangerous place about a train on which men attempted to steal rides. When no other opportunity offers, as in the case of a passenger train sometimes, the trucks beneath the cars are improved, where with a constant roar in their ears, a storm of dust and gravel in their faces, and a cramped position—like a contortionist in his box among the bottles—these knights of vagabondage cling on like squirrels.
Sometimes there is an extra heavy jolt, or a larger stone than usual strikes them on the head. In such cases the coroner's jury discover that the man was a tramp and came to his death by being run over by the cars. What would we do without coroner's juries?
Tommy watched the retreating train for some time, and then said to Ben: