THE FAMOUS TRAMP 
 
 WHO 
 TRAVELED 
 
 MtLES 
 FOR 
 
 I' 
 
y 
 
 
 —=— by 
 
 
 THE FAMOUS TRAMP 
 
 Written By Himself From Personal 
 
 Experiences 
 
 __ i 
 
 SUITABLE READING FOR YOUNG AND OLD 
 
 
 ' FIFTH EDITION 
 
 \ 
 
 .^ 1 ' 
 
 
 
 ’ Copyright 1948 
 
 By 
 
 THE A-No.l PUBLISHING Ca 
 
 Anaabject matter, as well as all Illustrations, and especially the title of .this t>ook,«Mi 
 fully protected by copyrights, and their use In any form whatsoever, will be 
 vigorously prosecuted for Infringement. 
 
1 
 
 I 
 
 A List of the Books 
 ON Tramp Life 
 
 WHITTEN 
 
 BY 
 
 THE THAMP 
 AUTHOR 
 
 THE FIRST BOOK 
 
 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF A-No. 1 
 
 THE SECOND BOOK 
 
 HOBO-CAMP-FIRE-TALES 
 
 THE THIRD BOOK 
 
 THE CURSE OF TRAMP LIFE 
 
 THE FOURTH BOOK 
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TRAMP 
 
 THE FIFTH BOOK 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OP A FEMALE TRAMP 
 
 0 
 
 THE SIXTH BOOK 
 
 THE WAYS OF THE HOBO 
 
 THE SEVENTH BOOK 
 
 THE SNARE OF THE ROAD 
 
 THE EIGHTH BOOK 
 
 FROM COAST TO COAST WITH JACK LONDON 
 
 THE NINTH BOOK 
 
 THJg 1K)THER OF THE HOBOES 
 
 THE TENTH BOOK 
 
 THE WIFE I WON 
 
 awjded the least ot anythia* that 
 
 would bo unfit reeding for ladies oaf chndreh, 
 
 ^ *e”ery^*home ** moral and entertaining books should be in 
 
f 
 
 X^erell he man^ to mock ami to rail you, 
 ^^Chere'll he many to tell you ’tis vain, 
 
 ^hey^ll tell you of dangers that lurk to assail you, 
 l^hat success you cannot attain. 
 
 Persevere, ‘Persevere, and accomplish your tasks 
 ‘Uhe worthy work youve begun, 
 y Your labor will reap its due reward 
 
 find the race towards the goal will he won. 
 
 □ □□ 
 
 □ 
 
 □ 
 
 To A-No. 1 
 
 by 
 
 Harold Sherman, SB I / 
 School ihCo. 62, S^ew York Cits 
 
to Resdess Young Men and Boys 
 
 Who Read this Book, the Author, who Has 
 Led for Over a Quarter of a Century the 
 Pitiful and Dangerous Life of a Tramp, 
 gives this Well-Meant Advice: 
 
 DO NOT 
 
 I Jump on Moving Trains or Street Cars, even if 
 only to ride to the next street crossing, be¬ 
 cause this might arouse the “Wanderlust,** 
 besides endangering needlessly 
 your life and limbs. 
 
 »j 
 
 Wandering, once it becomes a habit, is almost 
 incurable, so NEVER RUN AWAY, but STAY 
 AT HOME, as a roving lad usually ends in becom¬ 
 ing a confirmed tramp. 
 
 There is a dark side to a tramp's life: for 
 every mile stolen on trains, there is one escape 
 from a horrible death; for each mile of beautiful 
 scenery and food in plenty, there are many weary | 
 miles of hard walking with no food or even water | 
 through mountain gorges and over parched des- | 
 erts; for each warm summer night, there are ten I 
 bitter-cold, long winter nights; for every kindness, 
 there are a score of unfriendly acts. 
 
 A tramp is constantly hounded by the minions 
 of the law; is shunned by all humanity, and never 
 knows the meaning of home and friends. 
 
 To tell the truth, the “Road” is a pitiful exist- ' 
 ence all the way through, and what is the end? I 
 
 It is an evep ninety-nine chances out of a | 
 hundred that the finish will be a miserable one — an 1 
 accident, an alms-house, but surely an u»-mark©d I 
 pauper’s grave, I 
 
 m 
 
PREFACE 
 
 T he Pennsylvania System, with lines comprising 
 only a thirtieth part of the railroad mileage of 
 the United States and Canada, returned more 
 than four thousand runaway boys to their parents 
 and sent to prison eight hundred and sixteen uncouth 
 hoboes who had minors for traveling companions, during 
 the twelve months of nineteen hundred and fifteen. 
 
 The other day I stood by a railroad track while a 
 freight train passed. Aboard the cars I counted forty-two 
 trespassers, twenty-nine of whom were lads, many still in 
 their short trousers. 
 
 This incident incited me to search for the motive of 
 lads who perhaps otherwise were endowed with a normal 
 mentality, thoughtlessly runnning the great risk of finishing 
 their days as confirmed vagabonds, while other youths 
 displayed absolutely no hankering for the cars. I firmly 
 believe that my thorough investigation resulted in the 
 discovery of the keynote of the tramp problem insofar as 
 this vexatious question deals with illegal train riding, the 
 root of the hobo evil. 
 
 With rare exception, every hobo I interviewed proved 
 to be the offspring of parents who, fortunately, having 
 themselves escaped in their youth the tempting urgings of 
 the wanderlust, had allowed their son to remain m ignorance 
 concerning everything connected with the hard existence 
 led by the roving beggars, entirely trusting on Providence 
 to protect the boy from his worst enemy, the Road. 
 
 A merciless propaganda of all their malign attributes 
 has lately put various vicious habits to rout after an un¬ 
 disputed reign of centuries in the course of which every 
 discouraging detail of their harmfulness was conscientiously 
 withheld from the knowledge of the younger generations 
 with the logical sequence that it was a most commonplace 
 occurrence to meet minors who had become their prey. 
 
 By applying this modern redress against the Road, I 
 aim to conquer a curse that has taken a most fearsome 
 tribute from the youth of the land. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
Contents 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a 
 
 Pound of Cure . 5 
 
 II To Live is to Learn .. 15 
 
 III Lights and Shadows of the Road. 65 
 
 IV How the State of Georgia Solved the 
 
 Tramp Problem . 88 
 
 V The Call of the Road. 93 
 
 VI Conclusions . ,126 
 
Introductory 
 
 “An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure.” 
 
 P ITIABLE indeed ~is the lot of parents, my dear 
 Mrs. Ridder,” confided Mrs. Davis over the back 
 yard fence to her neighbor, “who have slaved as 
 many years as we have to respectably bring up their children 
 and then are forced to admit that their devotion is about 
 to be rewarded with basest disappointment by one of their 
 offspring. 
 
 “It’s Gerald, our firstborn, of whom I am complain¬ 
 ing, and who since the return to town of Bert Coleman from 
 his annual hobo trip to the western harvest fields, has 
 become almost unmanageable although heretofore he has 
 been a most tractable lad. It seems as if the burly never-do 
 well has made it an obligation to poison the receptive minds 
 of youngsters whose parents reside in this neighborhood 
 with garbled accounts of the disgusting beggar life he led 
 during his absence. 
 
 “Time and again, Mr. Davis and I have warned our 
 son when he chanced to repeat some of the crazy fables he 
 had heard Coleman relate as having happened while he was 
 hoboing box cars, that the unprincipled rascal had carefully 
 refrained from making the least mention of the numerous 
 revolting items which beset the path of the hoboes and 
 concerning which we elders have read articles without 
 number in the dailies and the magazines, and which stories, 
 at that, dared to describe only those of the ugly truths 
 which were printable. 
 
 “The shameless scamp, for instance, never breathed a 
 word that while en route he had associated on terms of 
 equality with some of the foulest dregs of humanity; had 
 suffered from the pangs of hunger whenever he had failed 
 to connect by means of scurvy lies with the unsavory leav* 
 
6 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 ings from the tables of honest folks; had been continually 
 harrassed and in all probability sent to prison by the police; 
 had made while trespassing a ghastly joke of the ever¬ 
 present peril of finishing his days as a miserably deformed 
 cripple, and had foolishly and wilfully exposed himself to 
 the endless number of other hazards and privations which 
 are the sole reward of those who lack the will power to 
 resist the lure of the Road. (See illustration, page 41.) 
 
 “Almost uncanny is the influence for evil that the 
 scoundrel has attained over our poor boy,” sighed the 
 unfortunate mother. ^‘Only this afternoon I received a 
 further confirmation of the great misfortune that has so 
 unexpectedly overwhelmed our family circle, heretofore 
 such a happy one. I took Gerald to task for neglecting his 
 regular school lessons for a study of maps and railroad 
 time tables. Instead of accepting with respect the richly 
 deserved reprimand, he flew into a towering rage and dared 
 to threaten me, his mother who has guarded him against 
 harm all his days, that if his father and I did not allow him 
 to do exactly as he pleased, one of these fine mornings we 
 would find his bed had not been occupied during the pre¬ 
 ceding night and he had forever disappeared.” 
 
 “A stitch at the proper time would now save 
 you nine, my dear Mrs. Davis,” interjected Mrs. Ridder, 
 instead of expressing sympathy with her neighbor in her 
 tribulations. 
 
 “Pray tell me how to make this ancient saying fit 
 , the trouble we are having with our son?” quizzed the 
 ious mother. ^ . 
 
 “Mr. Ridder and I spared no pains to thorou^y 
 acquaint our boys at an early age with every pitfall of the 
 underworld and so quenched every desire that might have 
 tempted them in later years to lead the life of outcasts,” 
 explained Mrs. Ridder who had raised three sturdy sons 
 to successful manhood. “By employing this simple pre¬ 
 ventive we fortified our lads with a safeguard that practical 
 
The Snare of the Road, 
 
 7 
 
 tests amply demonstrated to be an unsurmountable obstacle 
 against the designs of scoundrels of the class you mentioned.” 
 
 ”As it is too late to recant sins of omission can you 
 suggest some other remedy?” pleaded Mrs. Davis. 
 
 “Have your husband call at police headquarters and 
 there register a complaint against the fellow who is trying 
 to despoil your home,” advanced Mrs. Ridder, believing 
 •he had found an effective means to silence the tempter. 
 
 The ladiea exchanged confidences over their backyard fence. 
 
 “Mr. Davis has been to see the chief,” she was in¬ 
 formed, “but the sum of the comfort he received amounted 
 to a terse statement that as long as Coleman did not commit 
 a more serious offense than the doping of guileless youths 
 with faked adventure tales, he had not laid himself liable 
 to interference by the authorities.” 
 
 “Why not make it impossible for your Gerald to as¬ 
 sociate with the deceiver?” proposed Mrs. Ridder, undaunt- 
 ^ by her previous defeats. 
 
8 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “Since we became aware that our son was among the 
 youths who almost nightly were the rascal’s eager pupils, 
 we have vainly tried to dissuade Gerald and those of his 
 chums we thought could be influenced for the better, from 
 attending these meetings,” reported Mrs. Davis. “We are 
 daily receiving new evidence how deeply the teachings of 
 the scamp have undermined the resistance to evil of these 
 lads by the stubborn refusal of our own boy to listen to 
 reason, not even when his father had frequently chastised 
 him for his disobedience.” 
 
 This statement must have acted as a damper over 
 Mrs. Ridder’s concern in the family affairs of her neighbor 
 for a prolonged pause ensued which was only terminated 
 when Mrs. Davis re-introduced the topic they had discussed 
 by saying: “Heretofore our eldest had never taken the 
 slightest interest in the wayfarers who came to our home to , 
 ply their trade. In fact, so pronounced was his aversion 
 towards vagrants that when last fall a hobo I had treated 
 especially vrell proved the spirit of his gratitude by chalk¬ 
 ing an ‘easy mark’ on our garden gate and as a sequence 
 our residence became almost overnight the goal of every 
 Wandering Willie, it was our Gerald who first suggested 
 the purchase of a watchdog as a counteractive of the land¬ 
 wide advertising my charitable kindness had doubtlessly 
 received, 
 
 “Nowadays the story is one of a quite different tenor. 
 The death of the dog by poison we are laying to the door 
 of Gerald who seems to have made it his business to look 
 after the wants of every tramp calling at our home. Last 
 week he gave to an unusually repulsive hobo the only pair 
 of shoes he possessed except those he wears at present. 
 Furthermore, Mr. Davis and I have to be constantly on 
 guard to avert his indulging in his latest favorite pastime, 
 which is the interviewing of vagabonds on their method of 
 getting through the world.” 
 
The Snare of the Road, 
 
 “If I were placed in your predicament, I would take 
 fullest advantage of the failing you mentioned last, Mm. 
 Davis,” said Mrs. Ridder, interrupting the lamentations of 
 her friend, “by inducing every tramp I feed at my door 
 to relate while the wayward youth is present, details of the 
 actual conditions under which hoboes are compelled to 
 satisfy their roving mania. I feel assured that the stories told 
 by the tramps will amply supplement the one-sided accounts 
 the boy has previously heard, and in all probability will 
 drive from his mind the Lunatic notion that he must re¬ 
 enact the lawless undertakings of his unscrupulous teacher.” 
 
 “I shall repeat your instructions to my husband,” 
 promised Mrs. Davis, “and if your theory in practice proves 
 the salvation of our deluded boy, his heart-broken parents 
 will ever remember the. one who rendered them a timely 
 service.” 
 
 Bidding farewell to her neighbor, Mrs. Davis returned 
 to her own residence. Finding her husband who had come 
 home for his supper, alone in the parlor, she gave him a 
 hasty outline of the counsel she had received. 
 
 “The clever suggestion of shrewd Mrs. Ridder sounds 
 most promising, my dear,” commented Mr. Davis when he 
 had listened to his wife’s explanations. “Her idea follows 
 in general aspects the modern method of combating vices 
 by freely providing the younger generations with detailed 
 accounts of their attributes, a precaution which had always 
 stood the test when temptation seeks to add new victims 
 to the millions of uninstructed humans which these vices 
 drag to disgraceful and premature graves.” 
 
 Then Gerald’s parents set to task to devise means to 
 properly enact the novel scheme. As Mrs. Davis greatly 
 disliked to bother with strangers who came begging at the 
 door during, the absence of her husband at his place of 
 business, it was decided to direct all tramps calling during 
 the day, to return in the evening at an hour Mr. Davis was 
 sure to be at home. 
 
10 
 
 The Snare ef the Road. 
 
 t 
 
 Heretofore it had been a daily happening for vagrants 
 belonging to every caste of vagabondage to stop at the 
 Davis residence, but now since to their kind would have 
 been accorded a responsive reception, a week went by ere 
 a tramp put in an appearance. He begged to be given a 
 lunch and was told by the mistress of the house that he 
 would be welcome to his supper if he returned at the hour 
 of the evening meal. 
 
 Mr. Davis had arrived home and was looking through 
 the newspapers when he was apprised of the return of the 
 wanderer. Leaving the library he went to the kitchen 
 entrance to size up the fellow. Noting that the visitor 
 bore the telltale earmarks of the professional hobo, he 
 decided to make his acquaintance. 
 
 Friendly greeting the mendicant, Mr. Davis remarks!: 
 "I came to inform you that we will provide you with a 
 supper while our family partakes of the evening meal.” 
 
 “I am in no particular hurry, sir!” grinned the vagrant- 
 ing stranger, expressing a willingness to practice patience. 
 
 “Would you like to earn a dollar when you have finished 
 lunching, sir?” inquired Mr. Davis, believing that perhaps 
 the caller had encountered experiences of the kind desirable 
 for his son to hear.* 
 
 “I haven’t done a lick of work in all my days!” pro¬ 
 tested the able-bodied beggar in whose face became visible 
 an expression of abject horror. Then aware that he had 
 allowed his tongue to reveal his innermost thoughts, he 
 quickly corrected, “That is, after the regular working 
 hours.” 
 
 “I thoroughly appreciate your natural aversion,” 
 laughed Mr. Davis who surmised that the indolent vaga¬ 
 bond feared to violate the anti-work pledge sacred to hobo- 
 dom. “I didn’t refer to a manual task but merely desired 
 to engage your services to entertain my family in our parlor 
 with a recountal of lome of your hobo experienoes.” 
 
The Snare ef the Road. 
 
 11 
 
 *‘I’ve never done no tramping, sir!” averred the wary 
 fellow, evidently suspecting a trap to at the bottom of a 
 proposal so singular. 
 
 “Once upon a time I was a homeless hobo myself, sir,” 
 cajoled Mr. Davis, ignoring the latest assertion of his 
 visitor. “The job I made of box car bumming proved so 
 eventless that now when the members of my family almost 
 worry me to detraction by persisting that I give them an 
 
 “You won’t have to break your anti-work pledge,” 
 Mr. Davis told the tramp. 
 
 unvarnished account of my adventures, I am searching for 
 a substitute to whom, for taking this easy task off my hands, 
 I am willing to pay the ample fee I mentioned.” 
 
 When the rover maintained a sullen silence, the gentle¬ 
 man drawled: “Of course, if you are not qualified to accept 
 my proposition, perhaps the next stranger entering our 
 gate may turn out to be just the chap I have been wanting.” 
 
13 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “Did you say that you, too, had been chased from 
 pillar to post by the promptings of the wanderlust, sir?” 
 reviewed the tramp, whose undivided attention had been 
 held by this, to him, most noteworthy item. 
 
 “If otherwise, would I care to publicly parade such an 
 admission?” countered Mr. Davis who, for the sake of 
 saving his eldest from the abyss of the Road, had resort^ 
 to the use of a pardonable subterfuge as a means to gain 
 the more readily the confidence of the box car tourist. 
 
 “One of the profesh? A reg’lar blown-in-the-glass 
 stiff?” gurgled the hobo over whose countenance had spread 
 a malevolent grin when the gentleman nodded his head in 
 affirmation of his statement. 
 
 “If that’s the case, I won’t mind helping you out of a 
 bad fix, though I shan’t promise a satisfactory job,” csmt 
 the acceptance of the. offered terms by him who had tried 
 to pass himself as a bonafide out-of-work, a deception 
 commonly practiced by professional beggars. 
 
 Having accomplished his mission, Mr. Davis left the 
 tramp. Passing through the kitchen he gave orders that 
 the fellow be furnished with an ample repast. Then he 
 returned to the library where he resumed his interrupted 
 study of the news columns. 
 
 I HAVE engaged the tramp who is eating his supper 
 upon our kitchen stoop to lecture to us this evening 
 in the parlor on the lawless existence he and hundreds 
 of thousands of other vagabonds are voluntarily leading,” 
 announced Mr. Davis at the supper table. 
 
 “You have?” ejaculated Gerald who was completely 
 taken aback to hear his father state he had favored with 
 attention cme of a class he heretofore had cordially despised. 
 
 “I engaged his services for your especial benefit, sh,” 
 snarled the elder Davis, addressing his firstborn, “and I 
 
The Smre of the Road. 
 
 13 
 
 bear hopes that the revelations you will hear this genuine 
 tramp make, will spoil the yarns Bert Coleman, your bosom 
 friend, has made you believe were truths.” 
 
 Fearing that the argument would lead to another 
 heated controversy, Mrs. Davis here wisely turned the 
 general conversation to a less touchy topic. 
 
 The parlor was arranged after supper to properly 
 stage the entertainment. When the members of the house¬ 
 hold had taken chairs, Mr. Davis led his guest into the room, 
 introduced the stranger, and then invited him to open his 
 engagement. 
 
 'T ain’t a spellbinder, gents,” stammered the fellow 
 on finding himself attacked by stage fright. 
 
 ‘'Be at your ease, my good man,” cautioned Mr. 
 Davis .when he noted the embarrassment. “We shall 
 appreciate anything you may wish to narrate, provided 
 you confine your theme and language within the bounds of 
 truth and strictest decency.” 
 
 These words of encouragement worked wonders in 
 restoring the confidence of the hobo. Finding himself at a 
 loss to select a suitable theme on which to base a discourse 
 of the desired character, he turned to his auditors for in¬ 
 structions. 
 
 “Tell us of your latest encounters with those who 
 represent law and order, sir,” suggested the lady of the 
 house when none else advanced a subject. 
 
 “That sort of talk wouldn’t prove a bit interesting, 
 marmi” complained the vagrant, ‘'as it would start off 
 with getting tangled up with a police officer and always end 
 with stating the length of the prison term I wa* made to 
 serve to square my account with the law.” 
 
 “Won’t you tell us how you came to be a tramp?” 
 chimed Gerald Davis, who was obviously actuated into 
 brmching this t«xt by a covert wish that the hobo would 
 reveal pointers w^orth while remembering. 
 
14 
 
 The Snare of the Road, 
 
 “This would provide nifty dope on which to base a 
 lecture, sir,” replied the traveler, and when Mr. Davis 
 approved of the theme, the rover began to state the causes 
 underlying his fall from the ranks of civilized life. 
 
 The discourse was marred in the beginning by the 
 pronounced timidity of the speaker'and his lack of training 
 in even the simplest of rules governing oratory. However, 
 as he advanced in the delivery of his lecture, he counter¬ 
 acted these shortcomings by a display of profound fervor. 
 In the end the pitiful word picture he drew while he decried 
 the Road as a destroyer of everything good and noble in 
 humans, aroused to such a degree the interest of those who 
 heard his story, that as if spellbound they focussed their 
 attention on the tramp who had come into the privacy of 
 their home under auspices so strange. 
 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 15 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST TRAMP. 
 
 “To Live is to Leam.” 
 
 M any years have passed since I heard from the folks 
 I left behind when I ran away from my home. 
 Nevertheless, if my father is alive, I am quite 
 positive he still is the owner of a cotton plantation that in 
 days of my boyhood was rated to be one of the most pro¬ 
 ductive and best managed to be found anywhere in the 
 State of Arkansas. 
 
 The respectability of my family is best attested by the 
 statement that for many generations its members had been 
 received as social equals by the wealthiest of the land aristo¬ 
 crats whose colossal estates were scattered throughout our 
 district. 
 
 Bearing these items in mind, you should be all the 
 more shocked to hear me state that I fell a prey to the Road 
 when I was but a mere slip of a lad. To this day I blame 
 the agent who had charge of the railroad station in a 
 village near which our plantation was located for my misfor¬ 
 tunes. To aid in dispelling the soul harrying monotony 
 that in my youth was the bane of rural life, the younger 
 sons of families residing in the environs of the village had 
 made their meeting place at the railroad depot for the want 
 of a more conveniently located spot. To this misuse of the 
 premises the agent only offered objections when the racket 
 we raised chasing each other over the platform or through 
 the waiting and baggage rooms interfered with his duties. 
 He either had no conception of the dire sequences of this 
 failure on his part or, and this was the more likely, he 
 wished to avoid having friction with the patrons of the 
 company he otherwise served so faithfully. 
 
 As could have been expected from a gang of idling 
 youths who had been allowed to congregate near a railroad 
 
16 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 track, we learned to jump aboard moving cars. We con¬ 
 tinued this perilous diversion even when several lads had 
 to hobble through life on wooden pegs and artificial legs. 
 
 Discounting commercial travelers and occasional visi¬ 
 tors with local residents, strangers rarely ever stopped at 
 our village. To this lack of newcomers no doubt was due 
 a habit into which we lads had drifted unawares. When¬ 
 ever a train halted at the station, we searched the cars for 
 trespassers. We visited with those of the ticketless tourists 
 who bade us welcome, others who resented our inquisitive 
 prying into private affairs, we roughly routed from their 
 hiding places and then hot-footed them to the boundaries 
 of the village. 
 
 In the intervals between train hopping, car searching 
 anci hobo chasing we played mischievous tricks to the dis- 
 comforture of peaceable folks. Continued immunity from 
 interference led us on, until in the course of the summer 
 vacation, we committed a misdeed of such an ugfy character 
 that when we found ourselves discovered we realized severe 
 chastisement would be our lot when the details of the 
 affair was brought to the attention of our parents. 
 
 While we were discussing the expected outcome of the 
 transgression, our leader proposed that we avoid facing 
 our elders in their wrath by imitating the evil example of 
 the wandering hoboes and travel in freight cars to a nearby 
 city, where, so he assured us, we would easily find employ- 
 rnent. When the outburst of jxjpular and parental indigna¬ 
 tion had time to calm, we were to return and humbly plead 
 to be forgiven. 
 
 Moral cowards which we proved ourselves to be by 
 this thoughtless decision, we accepted this plan, one that 
 was to prove the more ill-starred for even wliile we were 
 busily plotting along rolled a freight train that for some 
 reason chanced to be running at a very low rate of speed. 
 
 When we espied an empty box car, our tempter sprang 
 to his feet, shouted, “Follow your leader, lads!” and ran 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 17 
 
 to the side of the train. Unmindful of the fact that we 
 were almost penniless, we took after him, climbed aboard 
 the open freight car and were on our way to the city. 
 
 Arriving at our destination, we ran into our first re¬ 
 verses. Any number of jobs were to be had, but none paid 
 sufficient stipend to meet living expenses, not even under 
 the stress of strictest economy. 
 
 Buoyed by a hope that somewhere else we would meet 
 with better success, we resumed our box car journeying. 
 Net only was our quest again rewarded with ‘disappoint¬ 
 ment, but while en route we were so often chased by rail¬ 
 road special agents that now and anon one of our gang wais 
 captured. Others who previously had acted decidedly 
 homesick took French leave when our last penny had been 
 used to purchase a loaf of stale br^d, as they preferred to 
 brave the ordeal awaiting them on arrival at home to the 
 
18 
 
 The Snare of the Road, 
 
 eating of unsavory “trimmings” from the tables of strangers, 
 and other hobo dainties beyond the appreciation of their 
 palates. 
 
 We had hoboed to Colorado and our original crowd 
 had dwindled to three runaways, when we encountered a 
 tramp whose sloven and slouchy appearance drew from us 
 the frank admission that of all repellant specimen^ of 
 humans we had met in our day, this fellow took the palm 
 as the rags he wore were in an indescribable state of decay 
 and rum had beastified his features. 
 
 Grossly handicapped as was the repulsive beggar, he 
 contrived to strike up a conversation with us well-bred 
 chaps. This led to an acquaintance, for so swift is the 
 downward grind of the Road that it quickly obliterates 
 every conception of racial and social distinctions of which 
 change a best proof is the commonplace occurence of meeting 
 white and colored, cleanly and ragged, harmless and 
 criminally inclined, and other mismatched combinations of 
 hobo mates traveling over the land in peaceful comradeship. 
 Seizing the favorable opportunity when my companions 
 were absent on errands he had given them to run, the un¬ 
 gainly scoundrel wheedled from guileless me the history of 
 our escapade. 
 
 “Although you’re more than five hundred miles from 
 Arkansas, kid,” commented the squalid vagabond when he 
 had attentively listened through the account of our ex¬ 
 periences, “I am willing to bet ’most anything that at this 
 moment your mother is standing by the garden gate looking 
 to see if, perhaps, for her sake, you’re coming home.” 
 
 “I have of late been thinking that myself, sir,” I 
 meekly confessed while tears began to well into my eyes for 
 the words of the uncouth tramp had struck a tender chord 
 of my soul as no boy could have possibly loved his mother 
 better than I did, and especially was this the case since I 
 left her care. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 19 
 
 “When you feel as mushy as all that, it’s high time 
 for you to sneak back where you belong, sonny,” gently 
 urged the loathsome vagrant, “and as by lucky chance I 
 happen to travel straight from here to Arkansas, what’s 
 the matter letting me pilot you to your folks?” 
 
 “Will you take home the three of us?” I asked, aware 
 that my chums were even more disgusted than I as¬ 
 suredly was with the beggar existence we were leading. 
 
 The foul outcast refused to include my travel mates 
 in his offer as he deemed it to be too risky for so many to 
 travel in^company, and when I resented his intimation that 
 I desert my friends, he sullenly walked away. 
 
 Less than five minutes after he had taken his departure, 
 r saw the Weary Willie coming back on a run to where I 
 was waiting on the return of my comrades. He was shout¬ 
 ing at the top of his voice for me to make a quick getaway. 
 As I did not discern pursuers or another excuse for his head¬ 
 long flight, I sprang to meet him as I wanted to make 
 inquiries as to what was amiss. Ere I could fathom his 
 intention, he caught hold of my hand, then by twisting my 
 wrist he forced me to run abreast of him while he explained 
 that my pals had been arrested by the police, how he himself 
 had been chased, and unless I yearned to serve a long term 
 in a work house where prisoners were starved and mal¬ 
 treated, I should keep along with him and seek cover from 
 oiur enemies. He had hold of me so that I could not readily 
 release myself from his clutches, and besides, I was so 
 badly frightened by the prospect of adding another unpleas¬ 
 ant experience to the lot I had encountered since leaving 
 home, that I allowed the hobo to drag me with him to a 
 patch of woodland wherein we found a hiding place. While 
 we were waiting on nightfall to favor our escape, the tramp 
 whose nickname was “Carolina Bob,” repeated his tender 
 to see me safely back to my parents. As I imagined myself 
 
20 
 
 The Snare of the Rodd. 
 
 hounded by hostile strangers and the strolling panhandler 
 was the only soul who seemed to have my interest at heart, 
 I eagerly accepted his offer. 
 
 Late in the night we left our retreat. Taking to the 
 wagon roads we walked until break of day, then we found 
 another retreat “to sidetrack the cops,” as my new travel 
 mate called this hide and seek game which we continued 
 to play for several days. We returned to the hoboing of 
 railroad cars only when Carolina Bob felt assured that I 
 had finally overcome a natural aversion against his com¬ 
 panionship. 
 
 It was night when we crawled onto a coal car of a 
 freight train, otherwise perhaps I would have discovered 
 earlier by days that instead of traveling in the direction of 
 Arkansas, the foul fellow in whose keeping I had entrusted 
 myself, was doing record hoboing towards the Pacific Coast. 
 When I remonstrated with him against being separated 
 by an ever greater distance from my loved ones, the nasty 
 tramp always had plausible excuses ready which further 
 deceived me who by this time had become a very homesick 
 and most penitent lad. 
 
 My rising suspicion that all was not above board with 
 the intentions of Carolina Bob was vastly increased when 
 after a spurt of really swift hoboing in the course of which 
 he carefully looked after my wants, he dropped to less fast 
 railroading, made me hustle my own provender, and in the 
 end induced me to panhandle his handouts. When I had 
 mastered these shame-stunting tasks, he taught me by 
 subtle, but if I disobeyed even the least of his commands, 
 then by utmost brutcd tactics, tricks of the hobo trade no 
 clean minded human would have dreamt were boldly prac¬ 
 ticed in public by boys and cripples who were held in servile 
 leash by heartless “jockers,” as this class of trainers of 
 beggars were termed in hobodom. 
 
 When Carolina Bob thought he had taught - me the 
 begging game so that he could depend on my applying its 
 
The Snare of the Road, 
 
 21 
 
 schemes with an assurance of fair returns, he began to 
 make lengthy halts at towns and hamlets where he forced 
 me to practice my new vocation. He avoided every com¬ 
 munity where jockers were not permitted to tarry and others 
 where scoundrels of their class were relentlessly prosecuted. 
 He gathered advance information as to the lay of the local¬ 
 ities from fellow jockers he met during his travels and so 
 well were all posted that they could furnish reliable intel¬ 
 ligence concerning districts they had never “worked.” 
 
 The clow progress we made enabled me to communicate. 
 with my parents. 'In the letter I mailed I pleaded to be 
 forgiven and directed that if they cared to answer the reply 
 was to be addressed to a town at which Carolina Bob in¬ 
 tended to make a stop. I received an answer. In it ray 
 folks gave me a straight piece of their mind, and unaware 
 that I was the virtual slave of a designing hobo, they 
 finished their otherwise tart epistle by. promising that I 
 should receive their full pardon provided I voluntarily 
 returned home. 
 
 But this was about the roughest task they could have 
 picked out for poor me! Even before I received this letter 
 and many times after its receipt, I staged attempts without 
 number to escape from the keeping of the boy slaver. 
 Everyone of these breaks for freedom was foiled by Carolina 
 Bob in person or I was returned to his hands by other 
 jockers whom I could not avoid meeting at railroad division 
 points. The maltreatment meted out to me by my jocker 
 after every futile attempt to make a getaway, quickly 
 undermined my will power and with it vanished every desire 
 to desert my brutal taskmaster or to inform the police of 
 his criminal doings. By the time we arrived on the Pacific 
 Slope, the hobo had brought me to the basest level to which 
 a boy could be degraded: He had made of me who had 
 sprung from one of the proudest families of the Southland, 
 a beggar boy to a beggar of the most loathsome caste. 
 
22 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 With the money he compelled me to beg, Carolina Bob 
 purchased alcohol at drug stores. To chain me the more 
 securely to the Road, he forced me to join him in the 
 drinking of the fiery fluid, either in its pure state or but 
 slightly diluted with water. At first I firmly refused to 
 touch the vile dram, but finally he overcame my objections 
 by insisting that I drink the acid stuff “just for the fun of 
 it” and “for the sake of sociability.” The result of this 
 continual tippling was easy to predict. Within an almost 
 incredible short span of time, he had converted me into a 
 confirmed consumer of a liquid against the effects of which 
 as against those of the Road, no soul had taken the trouble 
 to forewarn me. 
 
 Even the least desire on my part to return to my folks 
 was extinguished when one day I chanced to gaze into a 
 mirror and noted to my infinite horror how the corroding 
 action of the horrid concoction I had imbibed had com¬ 
 menced to change my boyish, clean cut countenance into 
 a counterpart of the repulsive, bleary eyed mug borne 
 through life by almost every professional hobo, a mask 
 which furnishes a public proof that rum and the Road are 
 aiming at a common objective — the ruination of their 
 - followers. 
 
 Concurrent with this discovery I lost every ambition to 
 mend my ways. This forfeiture of character was to a 
 degree compensated for by a high physical perfection of 
 my body which to a large measure was due to the rough 
 outdoor existence I was leading. This toughening of my 
 bodily fibers was to play a most important role in the shap- 
 ening of my subsequent career. 
 
 Soon after I had arrived at man’s estate (21), my jocker 
 with several of his fellows indulged in one of their periodical 
 drinking bouts which were staged whenever jockers met 
 and pooled the pickings from a gullible public by their 
 road kids for the purchase of alcohol. This latest bout was 
 worked out in a jungle camp. While Carolina Bob labored 
 
Th^ Snare of the Road. 
 
 23 
 
 under the malign influence of rum, he accused me of having 
 committed a fancied wrong. When I dared to deny his 
 charges, he wildy swore that he would bodily punish me then 
 and there before the gang of jockers and their road kids. 
 
 Heretofore I had meekly submitted to every sort of 
 abuse at the hands of the cruel scoundrel for I was quick 
 to note it served my best interests to suffer with least 
 complaint whatever savagery he wished to wreak on helpless 
 
 Carolina Bob was the toughest hobo we had seen in our day. 
 
 me. But this day before a mob of tramps, though the men 
 had passed and the boys were still passing through a similar 
 course of degeneration, for the first instance since I had 
 been made a road kid, I fully realized the bottomless dis¬ 
 grace all these years I had allowed myself to be subjected 
 to by a stranger who to cap the infamy was a vulgar hobo 
 of the foulest sort, and I dared Carolina Bob to do his worst. 
 
24 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 Scarcely had my defy against his authority left my 
 lips, than Carolina Bob with anger mounting to a fury 
 uncontrollable leaped to where I stood awaiting his coming. 
 Instead of whining like a whipped cur as had been my wont, 
 I bravely warded off his initial onslaught and then began 
 to return blow for blow. When I took notice that I had 
 the ability to resist his attack, the years of abject slavery 
 I had endured endowed me with the desperate resolve to 
 settle the score I owed the hobo fiend who even now con¬ 
 sidered himself to be the rightful owner of both my soul 
 and my body. When I had driven my fists time and again 
 with telling effects at the most vulnerable spots of his body, 
 I closed with him and fortunately secured a grip by the 
 use of which I threw him to the sod. 
 
 I accomplished this feat the more readily, as Carolina 
 Bob was handicapped by an overload of brain befuddling 
 alcohol. He had taken on a good deal more than twice 
 the quantity I had imbibed and he had come to this doubled 
 measure by taking advantage of a time honored custom 
 in vogue among hoboes that entitled every master tramp 
 to the privilege of extracting two liberal draughts from a 
 rum bottle passing the round of a hobo camp, while to 
 each road kid was allotted a meager sip. 
 
 Sitting astride of Carolina Bob, I copied after him the 
 fiendish maltreatment I had suffered so often at his hands. 
 Even when the jocker admitted in humility that of the two 
 of us, I was the better man, I increased the severity of the 
 ptmishment he so richly deserved. I only stopped when he 
 agreed that henceforth there should be a parting of our 
 ways and promised to immediately quit the jungle camp 
 never to return. Searching through his clothes, I appro¬ 
 priated his razor and other deadly tools which while I was 
 in his keeping, I had ofttimes watched the coward use with 
 dreadful effect to maim fellow tramps and unarmed citizens 
 
The Snare of the Road, 
 
 25 
 
 who perhaps unintentionally had run counter to the ideas 
 advanced by the rascal while in his cups. Then I saw 
 Carolina Bob on his way. 
 
 Returning to the jungle camp, I was pleasantly sur¬ 
 prised to note that during my brief absence a most remark¬ 
 able change had come in the demeanor of the jockers towards 
 me who heretofore had been their cuff. Although they and 
 their road kids had been interested spectators of the hobo 
 battle, none had lifted a finger or uttered a word in favor 
 of either one or the other of the combatants. But now that 
 I had defeated the villain who had ruled me with an iron 
 hand, they showered me with their congratulations as in 
 accordance with a precept of the Road — one likewise 
 observed by the wandering gypsies — I had attained my 
 majority, for the going down in defeat of a jocker at the 
 hands of his road kid is considered in hobodom a conclusive 
 proof that the kid had outlived his usefulness as a producer 
 of alms at his own peril but for the sole benefit of his trainer. 
 
 When the congratulating and other expressions of their 
 good will had been brought to conclusion, the jockers 
 insisted that I change my name de tramp “Arkansas Kid” 
 to that of “Arkansas Jimmy,” saying, that only a hobo 
 who had failed to vanquish his jocker or had gained his 
 freedom by other than recognized means was allowed in 
 trampdom to continue the use of the lowly appellation 
 “Kid.” 
 
 Almost in a trice I had blossomed into a full fledged 
 Knight of the Road. Later on came the moment when it 
 was for me to decide to which of the numerous branches 
 of hobodom henceforth I should devote my best endeavors. 
 
 The sum total of my roving had been a lazy drifting 
 from burg to burg with Carolina Bob. Now that I had cast 
 off every restraint the recollection of the missed opportu¬ 
 nities to see a bit of the world brought me to the decision 
 to become a “scenery tramp,” one whose sole ambition was 
 to rove the land in search of eights worth viewing. 
 
26 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 Starting on my new activity, I “jumped crossways,” 
 by which tramp term is meant, that I hoboed without a 
 regular routing. I covered the continent in record time by 
 way of the principal railroad lines. Having ranged over 
 the main rail routes, I hoboed back and forth over their 
 branches and the lesser railroad systems. Finishing with 
 these, I returned to the chief arteries of travel to search 
 out vistas I had missed at first instance. 
 
 Then, by chance, I made a most peculiar discovery. 
 
 I had heard it stated that traveling was the foremost of 
 educators. That legitimate traveling was this, I had con¬ 
 clusively proven to me as early in my earthly career as 
 the days just beyond the stage of babyhood. Then we 
 youngsters would sit with mouth agape and never fagging 
 interest listening by the hour to the tales of travel which our 
 grandpcu-ents narrated to entertain us. The “Old Folks” 
 seemed to derive no end of enjoyment from a recounting 
 of happenings which occurred in the course of journeys 
 they had undertaken in the days of long-ago, recollections 
 of which incidents had become graven so deeply in their 
 memory, that they had been vividly retained throughout 
 the years. Any number of other instances I could cite to 
 bear out the contention that traveling by legitimate methods ' 
 is eminently beneficial to both mind and body. 
 
 On the other hand, observations and personal experi¬ 
 ences without number and those of fellow tramps of every 
 grade I interviewed on this subject, have furnished irre¬ 
 futable proofs that illegal railroad touring returns precious 
 little benefits considering the almost incredible hazards 
 involved. To give a practical test to my discovery, I asked 
 tramps to give me their description of a number of certain 
 cities. This resulted that, with the exception of mention¬ 
 ing landmarks known to every child from their school 
 studies of geography, the general descriptions I received 
 tallied so well in major points as to leave the impression that 
 the cities had all been patterned after a standard model. 
 
The Snare of the Road, 
 
 27 
 
 A further and more thorough study of this phenomenon 
 brought home to me in full the truth that withal his count¬ 
 less faults, Carolina Bob had proven himself a smart chap 
 in one instance. Whenever I chafed under the irksome 
 restraint which his slow and sloven manner of hoboing im¬ 
 posed upon my youthful aspirations, he had everlastingly 
 repeated an admonition that proved most discomforting 
 to my travel and adventure yearning soul. 
 
 “What on earth is the use, kid,” he would snarl on 
 such occasions, “to shin yourself alive for the sake of 
 geezing at fancy scenery when to do so one has to miss so 
 many mulligan stews and other good things only to be 
 taught in the long run that the more one sees the less one 
 will be able to remember?” 
 
 When I had satisfied myself of the correctness of this 
 matter-of-fact deduction, I promptly discontinued my in¬ 
 sane railroading. By gradual degrees I slipped downward 
 in the classification of the tramps until I had descended 
 to the stage from which I had originally risen — I became 
 a jocker. 
 
 As did all jocker tramps, and they comprise a good 
 one-fourth of the professional hoboes, so I quickly mastered 
 the various low tricks connected with the capturing of 
 road kids from among the thousands and thousands of 
 youngsters who deserted their parents impelled by the 
 crazy notion that among strangers they would have a 
 better chance to get ahead in the world. I broke the boys 
 to the game of the Road by making use of the same foul 
 means as Carolina Bob, who had neither spared pains nor 
 hesitated to administer them with rankest liberality, had 
 applied to crush my spirits and which methods had been 
 successfully employed by every jocker back to the day when 
 a hobo too lazy to beg his own provender made the fateful 
 discovery that a likely lad was the most valuable asset, 
 by far, of the whole tramp business. 
 
The Snare of the JRmd. 
 
 2S 
 
 It’s less than three weeks since my latest road kid 
 regained his liberty. He earned a release from his bondage 
 without having lifted a hand against my authority. This 
 would have been a physical impossibility as he was a mere 
 mite of a lad. Nevertheless, were I to cross his path this 
 minute, I would have no further claim to his services; on 
 the contrary, the rules of the Road would compel me to 
 recognize him as my equal. 
 
 The police turned this trick for the road kid when they 
 surprised him ransacking a private residence during the 
 absence of the occupants. Finding themselves balked in 
 every effort to force or to wheedle his correct address from 
 the boy, they sent him to a reformatory. It is this sort of 
 sentence that is rated by trampdom an equivalent to an 
 unconditional release of a road kid from every obligation 
 to his jocker. 
 
 Ere many years have passed, so I am quite certain, I 
 will run across him and his road kids, for such is the dread¬ 
 ful blight of the Road and the imbibing of raw alcohol, that 
 whoever has escaped their combined grip, stands a first 
 rate chance to be drawn back into their vortex. 
 
 A rkansas jimmy had lapsed into silence. His 
 gaze and actions plainly indicated a desire on his 
 part to take leave of his audience. He evidently 
 labored under the impression that he had furnished a 
 sufficiency of entertainment commensurate with the amount 
 of the compensation he had been promised for his services. 
 The master of the house must have thought otherwise, for 
 he broached an inquiry under the lash whereof the hobo 
 fairly winced with shame and which brought in its wake a 
 resumption of the lecture. 
 
Th» Snare of the Road. 
 
 29 
 
 “Tell the members of my household, sir,” demanded 
 Mr. Davis, “if since defeating Carolina Bob you have 
 taken advantage of your freedom to try and quit the 
 miserable existence you have described?” 
 
 Arkansas Jimmy led off: Once only since I regained 
 control of my actions, have I seriously attempted to free 
 myself from the yoke of the Road. This was in the year 
 nineteen hundred and six when the national government 
 invited all citizens to participate in a public lottery which 
 was to be held in the midsummer at Billitigs. Near this 
 hustling city of Montana was an Indian reservation, the 
 acreage of which the federal authorities proposed to equit¬ 
 ably distribute among the citizens by taking recourse to 
 a lottery. One restriction was appended to this invitation: 
 Every participant in the land distribution was required 
 to personally present himself at the lottery headquarters 
 in Billings to file his address and an affidavit attesting the 
 legality of his claim to citizenship. 
 
 To serve the purposes of a lottery, surveyors had divid¬ 
 ed and then staked off the reservation into one hundred and 
 sixty acre tracts which had been consecutively numbered. 
 A concurrent drawing of the names of the citizens who had 
 registered at Billings and the numbers of the tracts was to 
 decide the winners of the homesteads. 
 
 As was to be expected considering circumstances, all 
 hobodom was agog with excitement when the particulars 
 of the lottery became known to the Brethren of the Road. 
 Of all who held a valid claim to citizenship, the hoboes 
 stood first in line to benefit from the paternal generosity, 
 of the government, as to them the scheme promised the 
 fattest kind of pickings in return for such a precious little: 
 A fair chance to win the ownership of a farm as a reward 
 for undertaking a hobo trip to Billings instead of one with 
 another destination. • 
 
 Months before the registration began, the lottery had 
 become the favorite topic of discussion wherever hoboes 
 
30 
 
 The Snare of the Road* 
 
 met. A continual repeating of the self-same theme soon 
 moculated the Wandering Willies so tremendously with the 
 gambling spirit that every soul of them vowed to attend 
 the lottery. They agreed among themselves who of them 
 drew a prize should dispose of it to the highest cash bidder 
 of the settled citizens who had failed to draw a homestead. 
 The proceeds of these deals in real estate were to be 
 squandered on alcohol bouts of proportions so revolting 
 as to make every hobo who had missed the pilgrimage to 
 Montana, gasp with wonderment when he heard the details 
 of the orgies. 
 
 These in brief were the plans of my fellow hoboes. 
 Like they, so I expected to take advantage of my rights to 
 participate in the public lottery, but their plans differed 
 in every way with the intentions I had in view if fortune 
 favored me with the winning of a homestead. I had sprung 
 from a family that in the course of generations had produced 
 many eminent agriculturists. The ambitions of these 
 ancestors were evidently coursing through my veins with 
 life’s crimson fluid or how otherwise was it that many years 
 ere I had heard of the proposed doings at Billings, I , had 
 nursed fond hopes that some day there would come my 
 chance to demonstrate that there still remained the moral 
 strength to lift myself from the level of a jocker tramp, 
 who among creatures loathed by humanity wqs the most 
 despised, to the status of a husbandman to whom his fellows 
 were willing to accord respect. Although I was without 
 funds, I possessed the grit to propose achieving success 
 by hiring out to other farmers whenever I had time to 
 spare from work that had to be done on my own homestead. 
 
 When summer opened I was yet abroad in the state of 
 Maine. I started on my journey to faraway Montana 
 only when the day drew near on which the registration of 
 citizens at the Billings land office would come to a close. 
 Long before I undertook the trip, the lottery-bound migra¬ 
 tion had stripped the dumps, the slums and the jungle 
 
^ The Snare of the Road. 31 
 
 camps of the “Down East” of its vagrant population. I 
 had allowed myself to linger this late in scenic New England, 
 charmed by its silvery lakes, its grand vistas, its sylvan 
 .dells and rockbound coasts, because I was a rambler and 
 <for this reason felt I was qualified to make a swifter job 
 of the hoboing to Billings than were a vast majority of 
 hoboes whom I knew to have been abroad in the eastern 
 section, as they were rattlers. 
 
 The chef had been up against a similar proposition. 
 
 In accordance with the method of travel they prefer 
 when hoboing over the country, tramps are classed in 
 three grand divisions: “Pikers” they are called who walk; 
 “Rattlers,” who ride freight cars, and “Ramblers,” who 
 hobo passenger trains. 
 
 The ramblers are further subdivided into two classes: 
 “Foxes” are termed those who ride within the coaches by 
 kiting hat checks, by occupying vacant berths, and by 
 resorting to other tricks of cunning, and “Wolves” tramps 
 
32 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 i 
 
 who depend on brute strength to accomplish their ends. 
 The wolves in their turn are graded into three distinct 
 ratings: “Catters” — those who ride the platforms of mail 
 express and baggage cars, the tenders of engines, and similar 
 places; “Danglers” — those who suspend themselves from 
 the rods upholding the coach bodies, straddle trucks and 
 brakebeams, or attach themselves to other hazardous out- 
 holds beneath the passenger equipment, and last in line 
 are the “Roofers” — those who travel lying stretched full 
 length upon the metallic roofs of the coaches. 
 
 As mentioned, I was a rambler and my professional 
 rating was that of a roofer. My favorite place of deadhead 
 traveling was the roof of the dining car if such was hauled 
 in the train I chanced to be hoboing. Protruding well 
 above the roof of every diner and there placed so near to 
 each other as to afford an excellent screen to a roofer, were 
 the smoke escape of the kitchen range and a large opening 
 in the roof of the car that did service for a ventilator and 
 was provided with a cover either end of which could be 
 lifted from within the kitchen by means of levers. One end 
 of this cover was always tilted skyward whenever the kit¬ 
 chen force, consisting of a first chef, his assistant and a 
 general utility man (dishwasher, peeler of spuds, etc.) were 
 plying their culinary art within the hot and narrow kitchen 
 compartment. 
 
 Excepting escapes without number from death beneath 
 the whirring wheels and arrest at the hands of the railroad 
 and municipal police, I encountered no incidents worth 
 while chronicling on that portion of my trip leading over 
 the Vanderbilt Lines to Omaha where I changed to the 
 Burlington Route, a branch of which terminated at Billings. 
 
 Although among the wanderlusting gentry the pas¬ 
 senger trains of the Burlington were rated to be rough 
 propositions to hobo, I had no complaint to register on 
 this score as at supper time I had climbed at Lincoln to the 
 roof of the dining car of the Puget Sound Limited when this 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 S3 
 
 crack train left the Union Station of Nebraska’s capital 
 and when dawn tinted the eastern horizon with soft colors 
 I was still holding forth in my lofty berth. 
 
 When the limited had passed Alliance (Neb.) I was 
 yet on hand and watched ill-fumed smoke billowing from 
 the smoke escape of the diner and heard the metallic clat¬ 
 tering of kitchen ware, both indications that below me in 
 the bowels of the dining car the chefs had begun their 
 work of the day with making preparations for the serving 
 of the breakfast. Later on the cover of the ventilator was 
 tilted still farther skyward so as to admit the cool morning 
 breezes which were sweeping over the prairie from the 
 Black Hills of the Dakotas. I moved a safe distance from 
 the rim of the open maw of the ventilator to avert an un¬ 
 timely discovery of my presence by the cooks. Where I 
 lay I could overhear all loud talking in the kitchen and the 
 adjoining pantry. 
 
 The limited had left Edgemont, South Dakota, when 
 the frequent slamming of the entrance doors of the diner 
 announced that the passengers were entering the dining 
 room of the car to partake of their morning meal. I heard 
 the colored waiters repeat the orders the patrons had se¬ 
 lected from the bill of fare to the chefs for filling. 
 
 Presently there came wafting upward from the open 
 ventilator the smells of the baking, boiling, broiling, frying, 
 roasting and toasting of the component parts of the break¬ 
 fast orders the chefs had received. These savory odors of 
 high art cookery proved extraordinarily tantalizing to 
 me who was almost famished to the limit of physical en¬ 
 durance. 
 
 To have one’s appetite verging unpleasantly close to 
 a state of actual starvation is considered by the roving 
 tramps one of the most commonplace of their afflictions. 
 A best proof that all hobodom is incessantly battling with 
 •very degree of hunger may readily be had in the fact that 
 
34 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 indeed a rare bird is the hobo whose waist line would fail 
 to arouse the envy of the corpulent among the settled 
 citizens. 
 
 In all the years I have roved over the world, I have 
 met but one pouch bellied Wandering Willie and his moniker 
 was “Pennsylvania Fatty.” Not a great while after making 
 his acquaintance the report went the round of hobo camps 
 that the stout one had commenced the serving of a twenty- 
 year term in a state penitentiary. The transom over the 
 rear entrance of a jewelry store had proven his undoing. 
 The police had to invoke the assistance of the fire depart¬ 
 ment to release the hobo burglar from the Unique trap that 
 held him as if in a vise. 
 
 This morning while the limited was reeling off mileage 
 at a most amazing rate, I felt so outrageously hungry that 
 my bodily emptiness was assuming health threatening 
 proportions. As I had come to my ravenous appetite by a 
 succession of singular experiences, I shall renumerate these 
 at some length. 
 
 Long ere the breakfast hour of the preceding day, I had 
 been abroad in the train shed of the Omaha Terminal of 
 the Burlington System. However, all attempts I made to 
 hobo from the city aboard one of the early morning passen¬ 
 ger trains were frustrated by watchmen. Not wishing to 
 terminate my important journey with a trip to the Douglas 
 County Work House, I left the hobo-proof station and went 
 to the freight yard of the Burlington, where, so I wisely 
 reasoned, in the open I would have a better show to make 
 my getaway from Omaha. 
 
 The freight yard was located several miles beyond the 
 city limits and quite remote from every human habitation 
 where a hungry fellow might have panhandled a lunch. 
 It was well past the noon hour when the first train was made 
 ready to leave the yard. It was a pick-up destined to Lin¬ 
 coln, fifty miles on my way to Billings. An inspection of 
 the cars to be taken away by the train revealed that tliere 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 35 
 
 were only two empty box cars and that these had been 
 placed adjoining each other near the caboose. Despite 
 this handicap I managed to climb aboard one of the ‘‘emp¬ 
 ties” without being spotted by the train crew. Soon after 
 I had shut the doors of the car, the freight left the yard. 
 
 With rare exceptions all ramblers are graduates from 
 the ranks of the rattlers. They return to the hoboing of 
 freight trains only in a case of direst necessity as the travel¬ 
 ing in box cars is far from being a pleasurable experience. 
 Freight cars were constructed to transport merchandise 
 and live stock but not passengers, therefore, they were not 
 provided with springs as elastic as are those placed in the 
 trucks of the passenger train equipment. Even the best 
 balanced freight car when passing over a smooth and well 
 ballasted rail joint will administer a most unpleasant jolt 
 to a hobo. A most terrific kick by the car announces the 
 fact whenever it is rolling over a joint either sunk below 
 the general alignment of the track or one that had buckled 
 upwards. Then one must count on being frequently sub¬ 
 jected to the terrors of “flat wheels,” a car ailment due to 
 the sliding over the rails by the wheels with the brake 
 shoes gripping them thus resulting in erasions on their 
 rims which flat spots, while the car is en route, roughly 
 shake its frame from stem to stern and from floor to ceiling, < 
 hence freight trains and the hoboes patronizing them are 
 correctly termed when they are called “rattlers.” 
 
 The box car into which I had strayed, soon gave ample 
 evidence that it suffered with two “flat wheels,” one each 
 in the front and rear trucks. I stood the terrible jouncing 
 with little complaining as I had been informed by fellow 
 hoboes where, on my ari'ival at Lincoln, I would find the 
 residence of the valiant “word fighter” William Jennings 
 Bryan, whose English lackeys had orders to look after the 
 needs of voters who paid calls at the rear entrances of 
 private homes. 
 
36 
 
 The Snare of thte Road, 
 
 The freight train proved to be a very tardy traveler. 
 The red rays of the setting sun were playing a fiery tattoo 
 upon the exterior of the box car while the train had tarried 
 for some time on a passing located some miles from Lincoln, 
 when my appetite became so fierce that forsaking caution 
 I slid open a door of the car to search the landscape to see 
 if I could discern a home placed so near to the right of way 
 of the Burlington to permit a leaving of the car to forage 
 for food. 
 
 Only then I became aware that another hobo had taken 
 passage aboard the train. The tip of a straw hat extending 
 beyond the otherwise perfect outline of the adjoining car 
 furnished the cue for my discovery. To attract the atten¬ 
 tion of the owner of the straw hat, I softly whistled. In¬ 
 stead of heeding my call, the other must have suspicioned 
 that a wily brakeman was trying to play a prank at his 
 expense for he instantly withdrew from the open door to 
 which he returned when I continued my whistling and then 
 only to frightened gaze from the car to investigate the 
 source of the noise. 
 
 When I caught the eye of the hobo, I nodded. He 
 returned my greeting in kind and then beckoned me to 
 visit with him. Appearances proved me to be the younger 
 of the two, therefore, I jumped to the ground and then 
 slipped to the side of the other empty box car into which the 
 stranger helped me to climb. 
 
 The middle aged fellow turned out to be a typical 
 rattler. Despite this vast difference in our rating as tramps, 
 we introduced ourselves and then fell to a recounting of 
 hobo gossip in the course of which I happened to inform 
 him that I had missed three meals. 
 
 Then you must be sort of hungry, bo?” joked the 
 rattler.. 
 
 A case of actual starvation!” I laughed, correcting 
 the box car tramp. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 37 
 
 “IVe got a few dimes in my jeans and if you have no 
 objections, I will stake you to a supper when we get to 
 Lincoln, fellow,” proposed the matchless jewel of a hobo. 
 
 I accepted this offer the whole-souled charity of which 
 impressed me so favorably that v/hen the train departed 
 from the siding, I took the occasion to repeatedly thank 
 the Samaritan for the meal that as yet had not material¬ 
 ized. 
 
 When the train came to a halt at Lincoln and we opened 
 a door of the empty to make our getaway, we noted that 
 the car had come to a standstill flush with the center of 
 the train shed of the Union Station. We had to thank 
 the lucky circumstance that a westbound passenger train 
 was standing in front of the station platform and so had 
 screened us from observation, that we were not immediately 
 picked up by some John Law on leaving the car. 
 
 “Let’s run for the platform and lose ourselves in the 
 crowd!” whispered the rattler, to which counsel I fully 
 agreed as I, too, had noted several blue-coats and other 
 suspicious acting characters frisking the passenger cars 
 for hoboes. We sprinted across the intervening tracks, 
 but ere we could reach our haven of refuge our exit from 
 the train shed was barred by the departure of the passenger 
 train. While we waited for the passage of the cars, some one 
 hailed. Gazing about to see who had shouted, we instantly 
 realized that we were wanted, badly wanted and, at that, 
 by the law, for we saw a police officer running in our direc¬ 
 tion who was yelling at the top of his voice that we sur¬ 
 render to his custody as he had seen us quitting the freight 
 train. 
 
 Within a flash I had forgotten the presence of the 
 rattler, the-meal he had promised and even the hunger that 
 had steadily been sapping my strength. In their stead 
 there came an overwhelming desire to remove myself be¬ 
 yond the reach of the approaching bluecoat. 
 
38 
 
 The Simre of the Road. 
 
 While the departure of the passenger train had shut 
 off every available avenue of escape to the rattler, it had 
 vastly improved my chance to make a clean getaway. I 
 swung aboard the vestibule of a passing coach, climbed to 
 its roof and then I gingerly wriggled over it and the adjoin¬ 
 ing ones until I landed on the dining car. Only then I took 
 the trouble to look back into the train shed to see what 
 had become of my pal, the rattler. Evidently he had re¬ 
 sisted submitting himself to arrest for I saw three police¬ 
 men sitting astride of hi® prostrate form and soundly 
 belaboring him with their mazes. They were teaching 
 him respect for the authority of the law. 
 
 Ere the train cleared the suburbs of Lincoln, I had 
 decided on leaving the cars at the first stop containing a 
 sufficient numbet of residences to insure a panhandling of 
 victuals wherewith to satisfy my crying needs. This plan 
 was put to naught by the fact that the train tore at swift 
 speed by station after station. When I consulted a Burling¬ 
 ton train schedule I carried, I realized that I had committed 
 an error when I had reckoned the train to be an accommoda¬ 
 tion makipg intermediate stations for instead of being such, 
 I was roofing one of the fastest long distance trains in the 
 land, the “Puget Sound Limited.” 
 
 It was dark and long past the supper hour when the 
 limited made its first halt. It was at a lone tank and as 
 I was not molested while the water supply of the tender 
 was replenished, I knew this non-interference to be an 
 infallible omen that no one aboard the train was suspecting 
 ray presence. Aware that the Burlington Route held a 
 “strictly hostile” rating among the hoboes, I concluded 
 to remain in my breezy berth. The warm summer night 
 proved to be an ideal one for the roofing of a passenger 
 train. Connecting this with my state of physical exhaus¬ 
 tion due to my prolonged fast, it was pardonable when I 
 fell into a sound slumber soon after the limited had left 
 the water station. It was broad day light when I awakened 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 39 
 
 and feeling greatly refreshed by the undisturbed snooze I 
 had enjoyed, I resolved to stay with the train until I was 
 either fired off or landed at Billings where the limited was 
 due at eight in the evening. 
 
 The incidents I have so fully detailed and which cul¬ 
 minated at breakfast time with my lying stretched fiat 
 on my stomach upon the roof of the dining car of the 
 Puget Sound Limited, will give a comprehensive idea of 
 the tortures I had to endure when below me in the diner 
 the colored waiters began to call out the orders of their 
 patrons to the kitchen force. 
 
 ‘‘Gim’me two oadahs of Poatah House, chef,” just 
 then one of the darkies sung out. “An' one of Eggs wid 
 der sunny side up; Two of French Frieds trimmed wid 
 Musharoons; One of waffers wid Vanilla Ise Cream an’ 
 Maple Sap, an’ two sma’ cups of Coffee.” 
 
 This was but an example of the many orders I heard 
 announced in the course of the serving of breakfast. At 
 midday luncheon there came a repetition of the exquisite 
 torture of mind and body I had endured in the morning with 
 the distress enhanced by the missing of an additional meal. 
 
 It required quite an effort on my part to restrain my- 
 ' self from hearkening to the dictates of temptation which 
 urged mo to insert my head into the opening of the venti¬ 
 lator and bodly brace tlie cooks for a lunch. Since noon the 
 flyer had traveled through a sparcely settled, cattle grazing 
 section and it was the dread of the possibility that the 
 chefs instead of granting my request would report me to 
 the conductor with the result that he would have me put 
 off the cars and leave me behind perhaps to battle with 
 an even worse predicament, that prevented me from mak¬ 
 ing my needs known to the kitchen force. 
 
 At three in the afternoon the limited had passed 
 Sheridan, Wyoming, and when at half past five it had left 
 Hardin, I jubilated as this, the last scheduled stop made 
 by the train was only fifty-eight miles from Billings. 
 
40 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 The serving of the dinner had been finished in the 
 dining car when the limited entered a lone siding located 
 less than a dozen miles from my destination to await the 
 passing of the “South East Express.” Taking advantage 
 of the delay, some of the passengers left the coaches to 
 stretch their limbs by promenading back and forth upon 
 the main line track. To avert discovery by the promenaders, 
 I shifted to the off-side of the roof where I hugged its 
 outermost rim. 
 
 There I almost lost my balance which would have 
 meant a headlong tumble to solid soil, when I heard from 
 below me on the ground some one hail: “Hey there, 
 fellow! What’re you doing there on my car?” 
 
 When I saw by the white uniform of his vocation that 
 he was one of the chefs of the dining car, I humbly pleaded: 
 “Please, cook, don’t inform on me I want to get to Bill¬ 
 ings.” 
 
 “How far have you come?” inquired the chef without 
 committing himself as to the course he would pursue. 
 
 “When I land at Billings it will be eight hundred and 
 forty miles, sir, ” I reported, 
 
 “Have you hoboed this car from Lincoln?” asked the 
 cook, evidently doubting my statement. 
 
 “All the way from Lincoln!” I replied, affirming my 
 words. “Without a drink or a bite of solids since I started.” 
 
 At this instant the express thundered eastward over 
 the main line. Immediately after its swift passage, the 
 limited commenced to withdraw from the siding and so put 
 an end to my word exchange with the chef, who, ere he 
 swung aboard his car assured me of his good intentions 
 when he called out: “Don’t fear my reporting you, bo! I 
 only finished my latest razzle with the Road" when I ac¬ 
 cepted this job.” (See illustration, page 31.) 
 
 While the crack train sped over its homestretch, there 
 appeared within the Open maw of the ventilator the tur- 
 baned head of the chef I had spoken to at the siding. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 41 
 
 Bert Coleman, the harvest-going hobo, faked stories of the Road. 
 
42 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 "Did you say you hadn’t had a bite all day, sir?” he 
 laughed. 
 
 "Six meals, ohe after another, I have missed, chef!” 
 
 I repeated. 
 
 "Hoboing is a rather rough deal, bo!” remarked the 
 cook while he placed a large tomato can upon the roof of 
 the diner and beside it, he deposited a paper wrapped 
 parcel. 
 
 ‘Look out that the cinders don’t spoil the grub, 
 fellow!” cautioned the chef who then as abruptly as he had 
 put in appearance, withdrew his head from the ventilator 
 the trap door of which he shut for the night. 
 
 When investigation disclosed the contents of the to¬ 
 mato can to be deliciously flavored coffee and that the p>arcel 
 held an assortment of sandwiches, it required no urging 
 for me to busy myself making away with the lunch the 
 generous chef had donated. By the time the limited came 
 to stop in the Union Station at Billings, I had finished to 
 the last crumb the handout which had amply checked 
 my hunger. 
 
 A haystack furnished me a bunk for the night. In 
 the morning I had my troubles getting hold of a breakfast 
 as hoboes galore had about exhausted the charity and the 
 patience of the natives. A fellow tramp who had registered 
 for the lottery initiated me in the particulars governing 
 this proceeding. He directed me to a notary public who 
 supplied me with an affidavit vouching for the legality of 
 my claim to citizenship. Armed with this document I 
 presented myself at lottery headquarters and when there 
 my address had been entered in a bulky journal, the ob- 
 j^tive of my latest hobo journey had been obtained. 
 
 Having no further destination in view, I took recourse 
 to a scheme commonly resorted to by tramps who lack 
 a point to which to hobo. Returning to the Union Station, 
 I hopped aboard the first train leaving Billings, irrespective 
 of direction. The train I swung onto turned out to be the 
 
The 'Snare of the Road. 
 
 43 
 
 “North Coast Limited.” I roofed the dining car of this 
 fast Northern Pacific flyer and when by noon I had passed 
 Livingston, Montana, my hopes soared high that I would 
 reach Helena, the capital of the state, where I intended to 
 break my journey. 
 
 When below me in the dining car the serving of dinner 
 was in full swing, a meal without which I would have to 
 get along, my thoughts reverted to the occurrences of the 
 preceding day and fondly lingered on the treatment I had 
 received at the hands of the kindly hearted chef ol the 
 Puget Sound Limited. This pleasant remembrance gave 
 rise in my mind to a bright idea. I reasoned that if I could 
 but catch one of the chefs of the North Coast Limited 
 stepping from their dining car and then tackle him for a- 
 handout by way of the ventilator, chances seemed favorable 
 that I would receive the gift. Henceforward at every stop 
 the limited made, I leaned far over the side of the car to 
 make certain I would not fail connecting with a chef, but 
 when the train had left Logan, the last halt east of Helena, 
 
 I admitted that my scheme had turned out a rank failure 
 by the simple circumstance that none of the cooks had left 
 the kitchen compartment, at least not on the side of the 
 train I had carefully guarded. 
 
 Clanging and scouring of kitchen ware told when 
 dinner had been concluded. The train then was speeding 
 less than ten miles from the capital of Montana, the arc 
 lights of which I discerned on the horizon. Aware that the 
 conductor would not allow himself to lose time by halting 
 the train to bounce a trespasser when the assistance of a 
 metropolitan police department was so convenient at hand, 
 
 I decided to chance my liberty against the obtaining of a 
 lunch from the kitchen of the North Coast Limited. 
 
 Crawling alongside the ventilator, I drummed with 
 my fingers on the roof until the chefs turned their eyes 
 ceilmgward to ascertain the cause of the noise. When they 
 took note of my presence, I asked to be given a handout. 
 
44 
 
 The Snare of the Road, 
 
 “Are you that hungry, fellow?” laughed the chief of 
 the chefs who^n the nature of my plea had told that I was 
 hoboing the limited. 
 
 “Came with you from Billings, sir,” I informed him. 
 
 “You should have tackled us right after luncheon, 
 bo,” interjected the second cook. “Then we had a lot of 
 good things on hand while now the heavy patronage we 
 had at dinner has almost cleared us out on edibles.” 
 
 “We may be able to pick up a snack for you,” offered 
 the first chef, “but in the meantime you had better get away 
 from the opening so our dining car steward won’t get wind 
 of the affair.” 
 
 “Much obliged to you, boys!” I thanked the friendly 
 fellows and then obeying the recommendation, I moved 
 beyond the ventilator from which ere long was handed out 
 a parcel containing the promised lunch. 
 
 Minutes aboard a fast running train are readily trans¬ 
 lated into miles and even then the engineer of the limited 
 was whistling for the yard limit of Helena. While the 
 train slackened speed, I climbed from the roof of the vesti¬ 
 bule of the diner and when the cars were running at a rate 
 where I thought I could afford the risk, I dropped to the 
 ground and then made my getaway from the railroad 
 property. 
 
 Hugging the handout as if it was worth the ransom of 
 a king, I followed an avenue leading to the seven hills upon 
 the crests and sides of which beautiful Helena had been 
 built. Halfway to town and at a poorly lighted spot I was 
 accosted by a seedy looking individual. 
 
 “Would you mind assisting a poor devil with the price 
 of a meal, kind friend?” whined the stranger. 
 
 “Come along with me, sir,” I invited, then raising the 
 parcel I carried so the hungry one could view its ample 
 size, I continued, “I reckon there is sufficient grub in 
 here to satisfy both of us.” 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 45 
 
 The fellow went along. By his paucity of words, I 
 surmised that he must have failed to properly understand 
 the purport of my remark. Therefore when we turned into 
 the lot of a lumber yard which we passed, while I spread 
 the contents of the parcel on a board, I explained to my 
 guest how I had come in possession of the lunch. Then I 
 kindly invited him to share with me whatever I had to 
 offer. 
 
 Instead of helping himself, the one who had claimed to 
 be starving, snarled: “What did you take me to be, guy? 
 Did you think me capable of scoffing a poke-out you have 
 bummed from some one else. Now I loiow I made a bad 
 break when in the belief you were a ‘gentleman,’ I stopped 
 you in the avenue.” 
 
 ‘ For the time being I was so completely paralyzed^by 
 the impudence of the able-bodied panhandler, that in 
 helpless silence I watched him strutting from the lumber 
 yard as if he were a lord and not the low down beggar which 
 he was. I regained full control of my fighting faculties 
 only when he had stepped beyond my view. Then furiously 
 angered to have received a rank affront in payment for 
 an unselfish charity, and bent on taking vengeance, I 
 slipped after the scoundrel. But when I reached the avenue 
 I saw that the law had taken this job off my hands, as the 
 vagrant had made a second and greater error when he 
 tackled another “gentleman” and this one turned out to 
 be a detective. 
 
 An empty box, car furnished me with lodging for the 
 night. At break of day I was routed from my slumber by 
 a watchman who placed me under arrest. He marched me 
 to the railroad depot and there telfephoned to police head¬ 
 quarters, asking that a patrol be sent to the station for 
 a prisoner. While we were waiting for Helena’s “Handy 
 Wagon,” the attention of my captor was diverted for a 
 moment from his duties. Looking for a chance to make a 
 
46 
 
 T^e Snare of the Road. 
 
 getaway, I saw a passenger train departing from the plat¬ 
 form. I ran to catch it, but such was the running rate the 
 train had attained by this time that it required fast foot 
 work on my part to connect with its rear coach, while the 
 John Law who had taken after me and was yelling like an 
 Indian on the warpath to attract the attention of the 
 train crew, was soon left behind. 
 
 The train, aboard which I had so unexpectedly alighted, 
 was destined over the Great Northern Railway to Havre, 
 Montana. To travel over this route meant quite a detour 
 in my westbound journey, but for obvious reasons I pre¬ 
 ferred not to risk a return to Helena. While en route, I 
 crawled to the roof of the dining car and so pleased was I 
 with having made a lucky, though hair’s ■ breadth escape 
 from imprisonment, also profiting from previous lessons, 
 that when they were through serving breakfast in the diner, 
 I boldly braced the kitchen force for a liinch. The chefs 
 provided me with a pot of tea and a generous layout of 
 sandwiches. 
 
 “I shall tackle you at luncheon time for another hand¬ 
 out gents!” I informed the chefs when I returned the empty 
 teapot to their keeping by way of the open ventilator. 
 “Provided ere then they haven’t fired me off this car.” 
 
 “That hobo has got his nerve right along with him!” 
 grumbled the dishwasher, but his superiors were so amused 
 by my audacity that they promised to look after my needs 
 at midday. 
 
 While the train was speeding over the face of those 
 falls of the Missouri River whose hydro-electric pow^ has 
 given existence to the thriving manufacturing city of Gr^t 
 Falls, there came to me from the ventilator the “vittels” I 
 was expecting. 
 
 In the midst of my lunch I gave vent to a merry laugh. 
 My jollity had its inception in the pleasure I derived from 
 the knowledge that I had found a solution for a trouble 
 that next to the relentless persecution all hobodom had to 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 47 
 
 endure at the hands of the police, had proven especially 
 annoying to tramps who roofed long distance passenger 
 trains. Judging by the excellent returns I had gathered from 
 the kitchen ventilators of the various dining cars, no roofer 
 availing himself of my discovery the details of which I 
 intended to make promptly known to the fraternity, hence¬ 
 forth ever needed to fear of having to choose betwixt the 
 equally impleasant alternatives: that of suffering with 
 clow starvation or voluntarily quitting a “good” train to. 
 forage for food. 
 
 It was mid-afternoon when the train arrived at Havre. 
 My leave-taking from this important junction point on 
 the main line of the Great Northern Railway was so re¬ 
 tarded by the slick sleuths employed by this system, that 
 it was past high noon of the following day ere I finally 
 contrived to make my escape from their vigilance by roofing 
 the “Oriental Limited.” Leaving Havre the right of way 
 ran through altitudes so high and therefore so cool, that 
 the chefs found it unnecessary to open the ventilator of 
 their department and so nipped in the bud all chances of 
 my connecting with a meal. I had to thank a lanky cow¬ 
 boy for getting fired off the cars at Rexford. He had 
 observed my hiding place and was so persistingly pointing 
 out his “find” to his friends, that his antics attracted the 
 attention of the train crew to my person. 
 
 From Rexford I roofed the diner of the “Oregonian.” 
 When this swift train had whirled by Leonia, Idaho, and 
 the serving of dinner had come to an end in the diner, I 
 deemed the opportune moment to have arrived to pan¬ 
 handle the kitchen brigade for a lunch. 
 
 “A handout for an onery cuss like you!” excitedly 
 shouted the first chef who had become so frightened at my 
 appearance flush with the ceiling of the compartment that 
 he had scorched a porterhouse steak beyond redemption. 
 
48 
 
 The Snare of tue Road, 
 
 “Not on your daddy’s tintype! And furthermore, if you j 
 don’t instantly get away from that air shaft, I shall report 
 you to the conductor!” 
 
 “You snitch!” shouted I, coming back at the cook whose 
 short reception made it certain that the chances for collect¬ 
 ing tribute from the kitchen of the “Oregonian” had gone 
 a-glimmering. 
 
 Scarcely had the ugly word left my lips, than the chef 
 picked a large and decidedly overripe tomato from a platej 
 that stood conveniently near and ere I had an inkling of; 
 his intentions, he let fly the ancient vegetable at my face 
 where it landed so well that its sticky pulp, spreading over,| 
 my countenance, placed my eyes out of commission. ' 
 
 Amid the derisive yells and hooting of all who had 
 witnessed the occurence, I withdrew my head from the 
 ventilator and then used both of my hands to restore my 
 vision with the least loss of time. While I was rubbing 
 my eyes, runnmg at a fair rate of speed, the train swungf 
 around a curve that had been constructed high above the 
 bed of a bounding brook on the steep side of a rocky ravine/ 
 An instant after the diner had tilted prior to taking the 
 curve, I felt with horror indescribable that the centrifugal 
 force generated by the swinging of the car around the short 
 semi-circle, at first slowly and then with ever increasing 
 momentum was forcing my body across the smooth surface 
 of the narrow and slightly vaulted roof towards its edge. 
 
 Although the blinding of my eyes had temporarily] 
 reduced me to a state of absolute helplessness, nevertheless;] 
 I instantly realized my desperate peril. Bravely swinging 
 my arms about me, I groped to find a fingerhold to break 
 the uncanny force that was irresistibly pushing me to an 
 inevitable destruction. My frantic endeavors to avert a 
 disaster proved of no avail and the next instant I felt myseln 
 catapulted into space. I 
 
 While soaring through the air, I prepared myself the^ 
 best the awkward situation would permit for my sudden 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 49 
 
 I aviated through space. 
 
50 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 entrance into Kingdom-come, which important event was 
 due, so I felt assured, on the instant when my ordinary 
 human skull came into intimate contact with the opposite 
 side of the ravine or with one of the numerous boulders 
 which liberally studded the bed that the waters of the 
 brook had in the course of the ages carved from the granite 
 formation of the region. 
 
 Instead of ending my earthly career in the gruesome 
 shape of a crushed corpse, I landed so neatly in the branches 
 of a large tree which had somehow managed to find a rooting 
 at the foot of the ravine, that with the exception of a few 
 slight abrasions, I received no marks to remind me of my 
 miraculous escape from a frightful death. 
 
 -• When I had leisurely finished the task that had been 
 so strangely interrupted, that of restoring my eyes to use¬ 
 fulness, I descended to the ground and then ascending the 
 side of the ravine to the railroad track, I followed it in the 
 direction of the setting sun. On passing the first mile¬ 
 post by a comparison of the mileage it recorded, I found 
 that I was some miles west of Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, a 
 town at which all trains stopped to take on water. 
 
 The light of the long midsummer evening had begun 
 to merge into dusk, when I heard ahead of where I was 
 walking the rumbling of what I believed to be an approach¬ 
 ing train. As the echoes became more distinct, I realized 
 I had made an error in my reckoning for I distinguished the 
 thumping of the levers of a man-propelled hand car. Re¬ 
 membering that my grimy countenance was in no fit con¬ 
 dition to be viewed by others, I hurriedly left the right of 
 way and took refuge in an adjacent woodland where I hid 
 behind the trunk of a tree. 
 
 From where I watched the passage of the hand car, I 
 noted that it was one of the kind commonly used by track 
 laborers to propel themselves to and from their daily task. 
 A full complement of laborers was aboard the car, but 
 instead of leisurely pumping at the levers as was the wont 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 61 
 
 of their class, the men were exerting themselves to such a 
 degree that I judged some powerful incentive was holding 
 them to their work. 
 
 Only when the hand car hove abreast of my hiding 
 place did I take note that to it had been attached a trailer 
 upon which several men were squatting who I took to be 
 railroad officials bent on a hunting lark by the angle indi¬ 
 cating instant readiness at which each held a rifle while at 
 the same time eagerly scanning the environs of the right of 
 way for a target. 
 
 The decision received a jolt when the trailer sped by 
 my retreat and I saw that each hunter had a metallic star 
 pinned to his coat over his left breast. This brought me 
 to opine that perchance the men were members of a posse, 
 which, to take charge of my mangled remains, had left 
 Bonner’s Ferry when the conductor of the “Oregonian” 
 had reported that another trespasser had met with his 
 finish. Jumping to my feet, I hurried to the track intending 
 to make known my marvelous escape from a mortal acci¬ 
 dent, but ere I had managed to climb over the barbed wire 
 right of way fencing, the cars had sped from my view around 
 a curve. 
 
 Believing that I would have ample time until the 
 return of the posse to make myself look presentable, I de¬ 
 scended to the side of the creek to wash myself. While I 
 was still putting the finishing touches to iny toilet, overhead 
 and running at a rapid rate of speed on a down grade, the 
 hand cars passed homeward bound. Although I lustily 
 shouted to attract the attention of the men aboard the cars, 
 my efforts proved futile as the racket raised by the thump¬ 
 ing of the levers drowned my voice. Feeling much put out 
 because I had missed this chance to get a lift, I climbed 
 back to the track and wearily trudged onward. 
 
 It was dark when a freight run overtook me just as I 
 had arrived at the yard of Bonner’s Ferry. Although I 
 hurried, the train had taken on water and was leaving town 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 S2 
 
 when I luckily found a riding place upon a truck of the 
 caboose. Thus passing through the yard and by the 
 station, I was impressed by the number of John Laws I saw 
 nighthawking in a small burg the size of Bonner’s Ferry. 
 I took especial notice that the officers were'busily frisking 
 about just as if they were searching for a lost but valuable 
 something. 
 
 In the morning as the freight train slowed down on 
 crossing the city line of Spokane, I quit the truck and then 
 following a highway, I walked into the city. Sauntering 
 through the streets, by chance I heard a newspaper boy 
 calling out his wares. 
 
 “Extree! Extree! All about the big train holdup!” 
 shrilly shouted the newsboy, arousing with his cries my- 
 curiosity to learn more of the affair. 
 
 Not commanding the wherewithal to purchase a 
 paper, when the lad passed me in the street, I took the 
 liberty to slyly glance at the head lines of the topmost 
 newspaper of a bundle he carried, tucked under his arm. 
 
 “Won’t you buy a copy and read aU about the holdup, 
 sir?” teased the little merchant who on observing my 
 inquisitiveness and believing me to be a prospective cus¬ 
 tomer, had stopped to consummate a sale. 
 
 “I’ve just landed in Spbkane and am down and out, 
 sonny,” I frankly confessed, and then when I saw a sym¬ 
 pathetic expression flitting over his countenance, I had 
 the nerve to ask that he allow me to take a p^p at the 
 leading article. 
 
 The boy offered no objection to the granting of this 
 favor, and handing me one of his newspapers, he patiently 
 waited while I read aloud: Late yesterday afternoon the 
 valiant dining car chefs of the “Oregonian” foiled a train 
 agent by hurling the desperado off the roof of their car 
 when the criminal attempted to achieve his evil purposes 
 by climbing into the open ventilator of the diner’s kitchen. 
 A posse which quickly collected at Bonner’s Ferry, has 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 53 
 
 searched in vain for a trace of the rascal, but as aJI avenues 
 of escape are guarded by heavily armed men who are 
 anxious to earn the reward of five hundred dollars that was 
 promptly offered by the Great Northern System for his 
 capture, dead or alive, we expect any moment to have extras 
 in the streets chronicling his apprehension by brave citi¬ 
 zens —, ran the beginning of the article when the little 
 merchant interrupted my reading by loudly exclaiming: 
 "Gee! But them cooks must be some great scouts!” 
 
 “They certainly are that if they reveal now the truth 
 of the affair,” I savagely growled while I remembered that 
 the same mushy vegetable which had almost managed to 
 snuff out my life, had succeeded in boosting the chefs of 
 the “Oregonian” into the ranks of heroes. 
 
 “Wouldn’t you like to earn the nice money, fellow?” 
 prattled the lad who had fortunately failed to become 
 interested in the suspicious comment I had made in my 
 juat anger. 
 
 “I would rather tackle a mad wildcat, kid!” I cooly 
 replied, but at the same time I felt the creeping of 
 my skin that at that moment either whole or perforated 
 with bullets was worth five hundred dollars to any human 
 with the exception of its present possessor. 
 
 Realizing that I had no business to tarry an unneces¬ 
 sary minute so near to the place of the alleged train holdup, 
 
 I I returned the newspaper to the boy, thanked him for its 
 loan and then hurried away, intent on removing myself 
 in least time beyond the limits of Spokane. 
 
 Taking again to the highways, I followed them until 
 I arrived at a steep railroad grade where I boarded a west- 
 j bound freight train. Traveling only at night, I reached 
 j Seattle without interference. I promptly quit the me^op- 
 olis of the Puget Sound Country for Tacoma and as quickly 
 departed hence for Portland and other points further south¬ 
 ward. Even there I did not allow myself to linger as eveo^- 
 where I tarried there stared at me from the walls of waiting 
 
54 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 rooms, post offices and other public places, posters proclaim¬ 
 ing the reward of the Great Northern Railway. These 
 advertisements and the comments I heard made in con¬ 
 nection with their display, had everything to do with my 
 immediate departure from the Pacific Coast for territory 
 wherein I felt assured that my liberty and perhaps even ray 
 precious neck were not menaced. 
 
 It was quite a while ere I commanded again the courage 
 necessary to return to the roofing of passenger coaches, 
 but ever since I have conscientiously abstained from 
 panhandling handouts from the ventilators of dining car 
 kitchens, for I had lived to learn that it was preferable, by 
 far, to suffer while en route from inconveniences, than to 
 risk getting tangled up with chefs who proved capable of 
 converting an ancient tomato into a ladder to fame. 
 
 The incidents of the queer adventure had passed 
 into oblivion, when one day while roving through grand 
 “Old Virginia” I called for my mail at a post office to which 
 I had had my correspondence forwarded. I almost collapsed 
 with fear when the clerk in charge of the General Delivery 
 handed me a franked letter, which although it bore my 
 correct name and address, had been posted by one of the 
 governmental departments at Washington, D. C. Believ¬ 
 ing that the national authorities somehow had managed 
 to ferret out my identity and now were trying to take me 
 to task for interfering with the schedule of a mail train, 
 which the “Oregonian” was, I tucked the letter beneath 
 my coat and then left the post office to seek a secluded spot. 
 
 When I found a place which seemed secure against 
 untoward surprises, I tremblingly opened the envelope and 
 extracted the letter it contained. No sooner had I glanced 
 through the message, than I began to leap in the air, yell 
 like a madman, and enact other manifestations of supreme 
 joy which brought passers-by running to where I was 
 cutting the capers to investigate my sanity. I stopped my 
 antics only when the throng of curious people had assumed 
 
f 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 55 
 
 such huge proportions that it brought home to me the 
 danger of arrest should some bluecoat take stock of the 
 commotion. Explaining to the strangers that the letter 
 I was waving aloft in my hand was a notification 
 from the government that I had won a homestead 
 at the drawing of the Billings lottery, I accepted their 
 congratulations at my good fortune and then made my 
 escape from the multitude. 
 
 Everything was coming my way. 
 
 When the pleasure of having achieved my heart’s 
 desire had become calmed so far as to permit an intelligent 
 study of the letter, I found a postscript appended to it 
 which contained several items of importance. Among 
 others was a note making it obligatory on the winner of 
 prize No. 1467 to personally appear at the Billings land 
 office to have his claim legally confirmed. Another para¬ 
 graph explained that to obtain a valid title from the govern- 
 
56 
 
 The Sna^e of the Road. 
 
 ment the claimant was required to reside on the tract for 
 a period of no less tjian six months annually for five con¬ 
 secutive years. A third appendix in terms which made a 
 misinterpretation impossible, warned that a least infrac¬ 
 tion of the rules governing the land distribution by lottery 
 would automatically result in the reverting of the priac 
 to the federal authorities. 
 
 This last mentioned, rather caustic reminder of the 
 responsibilities which had so suddenly been thrust upon 
 my shoulders, caused me to glance at the date of the letter. 
 Only then I was to become aware that for almost two weeks 
 the notification had trailed me crisscross the land from one 
 General Delivery to another. Instantly realizing that I 
 had not even a moment to waste if I desired to put myself 
 in appearance within the time allowance at the lottery 
 headquarters, I fairly raced to the nearest railroad station 
 and soon had started on what I fervently prayed would be 
 my last hobo journey. 
 
 Looking much the worse from the loss of sleep and 
 many meals but with a day to spare until the expiration 
 of the time limit, I arrived at Billings. When my identity 
 had been duly verified at the land office, I was handed a 
 map whereon had been marked the location of my prize 
 farm. Highly elated that with the exception of the actual 
 taking possession of the tract, I had completely complied 
 with the complicated rulings of the land gamble, I returned 
 to the street where I had a native direct me to my allotment 
 which was located some thirty miles to the northwest of 
 Billings. 
 
 Soon after leaving the city line, I entered the ex-Indian 
 reservation which was dotted as far as my vision would 
 reach with tents, slab shanties and other temporary shelters 
 which the prize winners of the lottery had constructed to 
 house themselves and families. 
 
 I remember stopping at a dugout to panhandle a 
 lunch, where I found a squatter woman and her nuineroiws 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 57 
 
 brood of tow headed youngsters occupying the semi- 
 cavem. The widow treated me so decently that I promised 
 to return in due time to balance her kindness with a wagon 
 load of the best my homestead had produced. 
 
 Late in the afternoon of the second day.the numbers 
 marked on the stakes placed by the surveyors announced 
 I was approaching my destination. The rays of the setting 
 
 The squatter woman proved a noble soul. 
 
 aim had commenced to slant, over the erstwhile hunting 
 ground of semi-savages when I placed foot upon the one 
 hundred and sixty acres which the paternal government 
 had presented to me by means of a game of chance. 
 
 So shocked was I with the sight my eyes beheld that 
 I hurriedly inspected the numbers marked on the corner 
 stakes of my allotment and only when I had assured myself 
 
58 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 that “No. 1467” was written on each of the four posts, 1 
 knew for a ceitainty that I had not erred but had come 
 into my own. 
 
 While I wistfully scanned the acreage of my private 
 domain, by chance I espied a large rock protruding from 
 the ground near the center of 'the tract. I took a seat upon 
 this stone an,d then had another long look at my property 
 from the spot whereon in the course of a few prosperous 
 years it had been my fond intention to build for my family- 
 to-be a cosy home from the wide verandas of which I had 
 hoped to gaze over the broad' acres of my homestead. 
 
 Only when I recalled to my memory this and other 
 lofty air castles I had so deftly built in the course of many 
 a pleasant daylight dream, came to poor me the crushing 
 realization how mercilessly I had been taken in with a 
 piece of Mother Earth that to secure I had braved the 
 perils and privations incident to three almost transcontin- 
 nental hobo trips, not to mention the hazards connected 
 with the return journey I was yet to negotiate. 
 
 The farther my thoughts ranged backward to all I 
 had yearned should be a corking fine future after the many 
 years I had wantonly wasted hearkening to the call of the 
 Road, the more mushy I began to feel within my outraged 
 soul. In the end the smashing over every hope I had 
 fostered so depressed my spirits that I commenced to 
 blubber as if I were a severely punished child. 
 
 “Howling desolation” would hardly describe the con¬ 
 dition of the crusty surface of my homestead and all the 
 others adjoining it as far as my vision reached judging 
 by general appearances. Nowhere could I discern a single 
 blad^ of grass sprouting from the ground, nor any other 
 visible sign of animal or vegetable life, for that matter. 
 The |and for miles was spread over steep, rock ribbed moun¬ 
 tain ^ides upon which had been scattered so many boulders 
 of eatery dimension that it brought to my mind the odd 
 idea mat Satan must have temporarily deserted his hellish 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 59 
 
 headquarters to provide humanity for all time to come with 
 an example of what could be done in the way of making a 
 tract of land absolutely worthless for agricultural purposes. 
 
 Retracing my steps, I dragged myself back to Billings, 
 whence I had departed buoyed by a sublime hope for a 
 , better life and to which I now returned a human wreck 
 in whose soul the last spark of ambition had been extin¬ 
 guished forever. 
 
 Misery and desolation. 
 
 Oftimes since, and especially when I chance to be 
 camping out-doors in the solitude of the night, the trend 
 of my thoughts revert to the days of my youth and I 
 wonder if the Old Folks still are among the living, and if 
 they are, then if they have arrived at the conclusion that 
 one of their offspring must have been endowed with a 
 marble heart to be capable of voluntarily leading the 
 revolting existence of the common tramp. I generally 
 
60 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 finish these reveries by cursing the memory of the agent 
 who had charge of the village, railroad station and had 
 allowed boys to loaf on the premises and so had furnished 
 them with first-rate prospects of taking the leading role 
 in a-tragedy similar to the one for which I have to thank 
 him — and him exclusively. 
 
 ^HE silence of the speaker announced that he had 
 terminated the entertainment. When he had bowed a 
 farewell to his auditors, Mr. Davis led him to the 
 door of the residence and there presented him with double 
 the compensation he had been promised. 
 
 “I thank you for your generosity, sir,” stammered the 
 wanderer, surprised to be treated humanely. “I am at your 
 command if there is anything else you desire me to do.” 
 
 “You will earn my appreciation, sir,” he was informed 
 by the master of the house, “if you will trouble yourself by 
 directing to my home fellow tramps who are capable of 
 exposing the inner workings of the life they are leading in 
 as admirable a manner as you have accomplished it this 
 evening.” 
 
 The wayfarer promised to fulfill the mission, and then 
 bidding Mr. Davis a cheery “Good Night,” he went his 
 way. 
 
 Returning to the parlor, Mr. Davis was greeted by 
 Gerald with a frank admission: “You were in the right, 
 father, when you cautioned me so repeatedly against taking 
 stock in the yarns Bert Coleman and other unprincipled 
 tempters had told to deceive me into believing them to be 
 actual adventures of the Road. Now that I have heard 
 the unfortunate outcast relate his personal expadences, 
 I am firmly convinced that the rascals only mentioned euch 
 misleading allurements of the lawless hobo life as would 
 have made any lad yearn to take a fling at it.” 
 
 i 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 61 
 
 “I am proud of you for acknowledging your mistakes, 
 son,” praised Mr. Davis. “But tell me, Gerald, have you 
 or your chums ever seriously attempted to fathom the 
 purpose that actuated the heartless scamp in leaving noth- 
 mg untried to sicken you lads of your good homes and loving 
 parents?” 
 
 “Such a thought has never crossed our minds, father,” 
 confessed the younger Davis. 
 
 “Has Coleman ever dropped hints indicating that fie 
 would like to have you boys hobo with him to the harvest 
 country?” interrogated the elder Davis who all along had 
 nursed this suspicion. 
 
 “He has, sir,” guiltily sighed the young man. “And 
 we lads have pledged ourselves to hobo at the beginning 
 of our summer vacation under Coleman’s leadership to the 
 western wheat fields from where with our pockets bulging 
 with money we earned in the harvest, we were to return 
 here in time to be on hand when schoobopens for the fall 
 term.” 
 
 “Has Coleman explained to you that boys of your build 
 are never hired where able-bodied laborers are expected to 
 exert themselves to the limit of their power of endurance 
 while toiling from before dawn until after dusk through 
 the scorching hot and seemingly endless summer days in 
 the dust permeated atmosphere of the shadeless wheat 
 fields?” questioned Mr. Davis. 
 
 “He never broached the points you scored, sir,” replied 
 the lad, a perceptible lighting of whose countenance gave 
 proof that at last the words of his father had been driven 
 home. 
 
 “Then see that henceforth my warnings are heeded, 
 for in almost every instance where boys under the guidance 
 of tramps hoboed to the harvest fields, their next misstep 
 usually was the Road and everlasting perdition! was the 
 final passage of the conversation between sire and son ere 
 the family retired for the night. 
 
62 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 I N the morning and prior to his leaving the home for 
 his place of business, Mrs. Davis asked her husband 
 what he thought of Mrs. Ridder’s unique scheme. 
 “Don’t let a hobo who knows how to tell stories get 
 away from our door, wife!” he laughed. I actually believe 
 that a few other lectures of the sort delivered by Arkansas 
 Jimmy, should suffice to forever knock out all false glamor 
 and romance from a most miserable existence which ^Cole¬ 
 man has described in such deceptive colors that had it not 
 been for our rare good fortune to check his evil designs by 
 accepting in full the advice of our neighbor, he certainly 
 would have encompassed our Gerald’s ruin.’ 
 
 To obey the more conscientiously her husband’s in¬ 
 structions, Mrs. Davis personally met all transient callers 
 at her residence. Two hoboes were sent on their way. 
 One was intoxicated and the other had been released only 
 lately from a penal institution where he had served a long 
 term on a charge of vagrancy and so utterly foul were the 
 garments he wore, that the lady of the house feared to incur 
 the risk of having him visit in her sanitary home. In the 
 forenoon of the following Sunday a third member of the 
 hoboing fraternity knocked at the kitchen entrance. 
 
 ‘There isn’t a bite left of breakfast and we haven’t 
 begun to prepare dinner, my good man,” said Mrs. Davis, 
 believing she had correctly surmised the nature of his call. 
 
 It proved to her a decided shock to hear the stranger 
 politely state that he had breakfasted, and merely had come 
 to deliver a personal message to the master of the house. 
 
 When Mr. Davis came to the kitchen stoop, the man 
 handed him a slip of paper whereon had been scrawled this 
 message: 
 
 Kind Sir:—Nevada Tom can relate stories of 
 the kind which will prove pleasing to your folks. 
 Give him a show to prove my recommendation. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Arkansas Jimmy. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 63 
 
 *'If you won’t mind a little waiting, you may have your 
 dinner, sir,” proposed Mr. Davis, “and this evening after 
 you have had your supper at our house, we shall have you 
 entertain us with a lecture based on your experiences.” 
 
 The rover accepted this offer. 
 
 While Mr. Davis was dining with his family, he in¬ 
 formed them that he had engaged a second tramp to enter¬ 
 tain them after supper in the parlor. While this announce¬ 
 ment was greeted with expressions of pleasure by the other 
 members of the household, it caused Beatrice, the eldest 
 Miss Davis, to complain: “What shall I do, father? I 
 have promised to be-the guest this evening of the Misses 
 Cameron, and still, I wouldn’t want to miss the lecture 
 by the hobo for anything.” 
 
 “Why not have the fellow give his talk this afternoon, 
 sir?” Gerald broke in. “This change of time would permit 
 my fetching home some of my chums to whom I repeated 
 what I remembered of the story Arkansas Jimmy narrated, 
 and though all had implicitly believed Coleman, they re¬ 
 fused to give credence to the statements of the genuine 
 tramp.” 
 
 Their father promised to see what could be done. 
 When the box car tourist, had dined, Mr. Davis inquired 
 if it would be satisfactory to him if the time of his engage¬ 
 ment was changed to an earlier and more convenient hour. 
 
 “Xhe prompter I get done with this talk feast, the 
 better it will please me, sir,” grinned Nevada Tom. Ever 
 since I freighted it into this burg I have been trailed by the 
 local police who seem anxious to get something on me so 
 they may lock me up.” 
 
 “If that’s the case, you may begin your lecture as 
 soon as we have arranged the parlor for the entertainment, 
 sir,” he was informed by Mr. Davis who turned to go but 
 
 was recalled by the vagabond. 
 
 “Do you wish me to commence the talk with stating how 
 
 I come to be a wanderluster, sir?” inquired the wayfarer. 
 
64 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “Arkansas Jimmy has given us such a good account 
 of the process that a repetition should prove wearisome 
 history, sir,” replied Mr. Davis. “Therefore I should prefer 
 if you would recount interesting episodes of your career. 
 This should prove an easy task, provided you confine 
 yourself to subjects and language appreciable to the ladies 
 of my household.” 
 
 When the hobo had promised to comply with these 
 provisions, Mr. Davis left him to inform his family of the 
 change in the hour of the lecture. 
 
 While his father busied himself looking after the stag¬ 
 ing of the entertainment, Gerald Davis hurried from the 
 house to gather those of his friends he could readily find. 
 Returning to his home with the lads who had consented to 
 attend the lecture, he found all arrangements had been 
 finished for its immediate commencement. 
 
 The traveler was led into the parlor by the master of 
 the house who acquainted him with his auditors and when 
 this formality had been observed, the hobo related the 
 following episode of his career. 
 
f 
 
 ) 
 
 ' The Snare of the Road. 65 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF THE SECOND TRAMP. 
 
 “Lights and Shadows of the Road.” 
 
 I N the early part of the year nineteen hundred and 
 one, a Captain Lucas made the discovery that an 
 immense pool of mineral oil underlay ‘'Spindle Top” 
 by which odd name was locally known a hillock located in 
 the otherwise level Mexican Gulf Coast Country of Texas, 
 a few miles to the south of the thriving city of Beaumont. 
 Ere long numerous steam drills had penetrated the crust 
 of earth overlying the subterranean lake of crude oil, which 
 fact in every instance was amply attested by a stream of 
 the amber colored fluid gushing skyward higher even than 
 were the loftiest of the derricks which thickly studded the 
 territory covered by the oil field. 
 
 Every advancement of a prospect from a mere hole in 
 the ground to a. bonafide producing oil well had in its train 
 the hoisting of lucky speculators from the humdrum exist¬ 
 ence of ordinary mortals to the level of captains of industry, 
 and in some instances, to the ranks of full fledged million¬ 
 aires. The tales which went abroad in the land of investors 
 in oil rising almost overnight to the command of fortunes, 
 promptly resulted in setting the venturesome portion of 
 the population aflame with what was commonly termed 
 ; “oil fever.” Soon every passenger train speeding in the 
 1 direction of Beaumont carried capacity loads of people 
 ; who were hurrying to reach the El Dorado of the Latter 
 I Day where they hoped to acquire quick wealth, 
 i Closely following in the wake of those who made the 
 I pilgrimage to the new oil field as the legitimate patrons of 
 i the railroads, but traveling by illegal methods came the 
 I riffraff of the continent. Repres^ted foremost in numerical 
 : strength among the outpour of the slums and other shady 
 
 i byways of North America wert the Brethren of the Road. 
 
 I . 
 
 1 
 
 i ■ 
 
66 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 Chow Billy and I were rumaging over the western 
 section of the state of Nebraska when the oil excitement 
 held the country in its tightest grip. He was the first one 
 of our partnership to fall a victim to the oil fever and I 
 judged his attack of the malady to be a most natural 
 visitation, as from confidences he had revealed for my 
 amusement, Chow Billy must have been all his life afflicted 
 with an adventurous inclination. 
 
 At one time in his checkered career he had been a 
 man o’war’s man. This statement was borne out by his 
 singular name de tramp, as “Chow” in the parlance of the 
 bluejackets stands for grub, food and victuals in general. 
 In accordance with Chow’s story covering his seafaring 
 experiences, he had been a ship’s cook, first class, aboard 
 a battleship. So well was he liked by his mates and superi¬ 
 ors, that young as he then was, he stood first in line for 
 promotion to the coveted rank of commissary steward. 
 His drop from grace had its beginning on the Indian Ocean 
 where the battleship ran into a typhoon of such magnificent 
 proportions that for days the crew and the officers of the 
 storm buffeted vessel, unable to enjoy their meals in their 
 regular messes, had to content themselves snatching a bite 
 whenever possible. Then it came to pass that their idol of 
 a cook served them with salted coffee, just as if the copious 
 quantities of brine each had swallowed as it came dashing 
 and rolling over the decks by the ton lot had not been suf¬ 
 ficient to sicken them of salt all their days. The sailors 
 never forgave the chef his unintentional error of mistaking 
 salt for sugar and when some months later he Was called 
 before a court martial to answer for a serious infraction of 
 the naval regulations, he was dishonorably dismissed from 
 the service. Fearing to accept honorable employment 
 with the onus of a disgraceful discharge from the navy 
 hanging over him as did in ancient times the famed sword 
 that suspended by a silk thread hung at a banquet above 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 67 
 
 Chow Billy, the cook of the battleship, had salted their coffee. 
 
 
68 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 ■•f 
 
 the head of Damocles, he drifted downward until he was 
 claimed by the Road, the final haven of refuge of all human 
 wreckage. 
 
 As I had stated, Chow Billy, or as I preferred to address 
 him for short, “Chow” fell a prey to the lure of Spindle 
 Top, and good pal which I was, I allowed him to urge me 
 to come along with him and witness gushers spouting oil 
 by the thousand barrels, to connect with the lavish gen¬ 
 erosity of the drillers and other high salaried characters 
 employed in the oil fields, and lastly, to benefit, should 
 such a lucky event come moving our way, by allowing 
 ourselves to be boosted among the mortals who perhaps 
 as long as they breathed would never again be reduced to 
 the necessity of having to carefully count their spending 
 money. 
 
 We hoboed to Kansas City, the hustling hub of com¬ 
 mercial America. Then we rambled southward over the 
 Kansas City Southern, a railroad the hoboes had dubbed 
 “The Casey.” As might have been expected from a systeni 
 that straight as the crow flies led out of the north to 
 southern Texas, the Casey quickly became the favorite 
 route of travel for all tramps hoboing to Spindle Top. 
 
 About the time the officials of the Kansas City South¬ 
 ern were congratulating themselves on the great increase 
 in the revenues of the railroad due to the oil boom, they 
 were unpleasantly reminded by reports of stations, freight 
 cars, warehouses and other properties having been despoiled, 
 that the Casey was also furnishing transportation to a most 
 undesirable class of patrons. When the criminal depreda¬ 
 tions of roving marauders assumed such proportions as 
 to necessitate taking recourse to stern repressive measures, 
 the management of the Casey issued orders to their sub¬ 
 ordinates that they should see to it that henceforth hoboing 
 over the railroad was made so disagreeable to every class 
 of trespassers, that they would abstain from patronizing 
 the Kansas City Southern. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 60 
 
 Chow and I had peacefully hoboed several hundred 
 miles over the Casey, when the defy against trampdom was 
 gazetted. The circumstance that we were danglers proved 
 our salvation from having to share the*fate which overtook 
 all train bummers who were caught in the strict enforcement 
 of the anti-hobo regulations. Still, even we who traveled 
 dangling from rods and rafters beneath the coaches had 
 our troubles making headway and we deemed it to be noth¬ 
 ing beyond the expected when in the course of a day's 
 journey we were several times chased from our hiding places. 
 At almost every stop at which we were left behind, we ran 
 across other tramps whose travel plans had suffered similar 
 delays. However, their and our personal experiences 
 differed in one vital respect, for unless the passenger train 
 had stopped or was moving at less than a walking rate we 
 danglers courted little danger coming in contact with the 
 boots and hard firsts of the irate railroaders. On the other 
 hand, the hoboes we met bore numerous evidences of having 
 been roughly handled by whoever had knocked them off 
 speeding trains. 
 
 One evening late Chow and I were fired off an accom¬ 
 modation train at Siloam, Arkansas. We had already 
 missed many hours of sleep, yet we decided to take advan¬ 
 tage of the night by trying to dangle the “Crow Limited,” 
 which crack flyer of the Casey was due at mignight. When 
 the train left Siloam, we swung ourselves under its rearmost 
 Pullman and there straddling a brakebeam we traveled 
 southward. 
 
 The night was moonless and hanging low overhead were 
 rain threatening clouds. The gloomy darkness proved to be 
 so soul depressing that it seemed to have been especially 
 fashioned to induce sleep. To add another dreadful strain 
 on our desire to loll away into a slumber from which we 
 knew that there Would be no awakening, the whirling wheels 
 which spun over the rails ahead, beside and to the rear of 
 us, where ceaselessly whining their monotonous refrain 
 
70 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 of “Clickety Click!” and “Clackety Clack!” that had 
 proven a lullaby of death to so many danglers who unable 
 to further resist its fascination had dozed away and then 
 with an uncanny suddenness had been hurled to a horrible 
 destruction beneath the pounding wheels. Had it not been 
 for the countless painful jolts we were continually receiving 
 from the wildly cavorting brakebeam that was but loosely 
 attached to the fiercely bouncing truck, there would have 
 been no telling how soon our perilous midnight journey 
 might have terminated in disaster. 
 
 Now and anon when the limited passed by the homes 
 of planters and cabins of darkies where midnight oil was 
 burning, the blackness of the-outdoors was momentarily 
 relieved by brilliant shafts of light. We welcomed these, 
 glittering gleams and the rays emitted by lighted lanjps at 
 stations where the train made stops and at others by which 
 the limited thundered, as there was no counteractive for 
 drowsiness superior to the penetrating brightness of light. 
 
 The Crow Limited had halted at Stillwell and at Sali- 
 saw. Fearing for our safety because of our constantly 
 increasing sleepiness, we decided to quit the train at the 
 first water stop beyond Spiro, a junction point where the 
 Fort Smith Branch of the Casey joined the main line and 
 where a sleuth made his headquarters who had earned a 
 reputation as a hunter of trespassers. 
 
 At Spiro a. Pullman originating at Fort Smith was 
 coupled onto the rear end of the Crow Limited. We 
 shifted to a seat upon a brakebeam of this sleeper for the 
 greater protection the last car of a train afforded to a 
 dangler against discovery of his whereabouts by station 
 employees who after nightfall habitually scanned the faces 
 of the passengers traveling in the day coaches but generally 
 returned to their allotted tasks when the sleeping cars 
 passed the platforms, as with rare exceptions the patrons 
 of the Pullmans had drawn the shades over the windows of 
 their compartments. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 71 
 
 Scarcely had the limited left Spiro than straight over¬ 
 head in the Pullman from where we were hugging the truck, 
 a shade that heretofore had been tightly drawn over a 
 window was let up to its full length, and so permitted a 
 lighted lamp within the car to cast its bright reflection 
 upon the black background furnished outdoors by the night. 
 We noted by the shadows which the rays of the lamp 
 
 Overnight the Kansas City Southern became “strictly hostile." 
 
 projected into the illuminated square of the window that 
 two passengers, a lady and a gentleman, had taken oppo¬ 
 site seats near it. 
 
 “Gee whiz, Tom!” excitedly yelled Chow into my 
 ears to counteract the racket raised by the thundering 
 train. “While we poor fellows are having our troubles 
 trying to stay awake, only a few inches above where we 
 
72 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 ■ are flirting with Death are a couple who at two in the morn¬ 
 ing and still dressed in their street clothes are putting to 
 naught nature’s law of recuperation!” 
 
 I shouted back to Chow an answer of similar portent 
 and then returned to breathing against the tips of my 
 fingers which had become quite benumbed in the terrific 
 draught generated by the racing cars. 
 
 Although the closed window prevented the escape of 
 sound to the outdoors, the shadows of their moving lips, 
 their gesticulating hands and the frequent changes in the 
 tilt of their heads, announced that the pair of travelers 
 were engaged in a lively conversation. 
 
 The humorous comments we passed between ourselves 
 at the expense of the wide awake patrons of the Pullman 
 Company so excited our nerves, that ere we became aware 
 of this welcome change, we had conquered our drowsiness. 
 Having assured ourselves that our wakefulness was one 
 of a lasting character, to pass the time the more pleasantly, 
 we fell to studying the shadowgraphs of the passengers 
 whose timely traveling over the Casey that night, had 
 furnished us with a lease to hobo over the “strictly hostile 
 railroad farther, by far, than we had dared to anticipate. 
 
 Not unlike periscopic views projected against a sheet, 
 the animated silhouettes performed their peculiar antics 
 within the bounds of the bright square of the window. 
 From our point of observation it seemed as if this quadrant 
 of' light with its moving shadow pictures was dragged at 
 lightning rate of rapidity by superhuman hands over the 
 jet black landscape of Arkansas. The shadows moved 
 closest to the side of the train and therefore became the 
 more distinct when the limited whizzed through railroad 
 cuts and forests, past freight cars standing on sidings and 
 by stations and other structures erected adjacent to the 
 right of way. They receded until their forms assumed 
 
T}i 4 Snare of the Road. 
 
 73 
 
 titanic dimensions and their outlines became dimmed to 
 a misty gray when the train whirled over bridges, trestles 
 and high embankments. 
 
 The Crow Limited sped southward through Western 
 Arkansas making the regular stops and skimming by sta¬ 
 tions not enumerated in its fast schedule. All the while 
 the shadows amused us with their singular tricks and con¬ 
 tortions. They continued their play until dawn dispelling 
 the somber shroud of the night, neutralized the rays of the 
 lamp as they shone beyond the pane of the window. But 
 footsteps and other noises transmitted through the floor 
 of the Pullman gave the cue that the couple remained as 
 wide awake as ever. 
 
 Our luck of the night held out in the light of day as 
 neither members of the train crew, nor passengers, nor even 
 native Arkansans discovered our riding place. At nine in 
 the morning the train came to a halt in the trainshed of 
 the Union Station at Texarkana. We had now entered the 
 state of Texas where every rambler caught in, on or under 
 a passenger train was invariably condemned to serve on a 
 convict farm a term of eleven months and twenty-nine 
 days at hard labor. This weighty reason coupled with our 
 complete physical exhaustion decided us to quit the train. 
 
 Aware that in all larger terminals policemen were on 
 the lookout for trespassers on the off-side of trains, we 
 crawled from under the Pullman to the station platform. 
 Having assured ourselves that no John Law was on hand 
 to receive us, we glanced upward at the window of the car 
 to take a peep at the passengers whose wakefulness had 
 made it possible for us to hobo more than two hundred 
 and fifty miles. We were to be disappointed, as the shade 
 was drawn taut over the window. However, a murmuring 
 of voices emanating from within the compartment told us 
 that even this late in the day the occupants were as active 
 as ever. 
 
74 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 When climbing to the platform, we were shielded from 
 public observation by two colored porters who were stand¬ 
 ing at servile attention by the vestibules of their adjoining 
 Pullmans to assist patrons entering and leaving the sleep¬ 
 ing cars. As I raised myself to the platform, by chance, 
 my ears caught items of interest of a conversation indulged 
 in by the darkles and in which they were so thoroughly 
 absorbed that they failed to take note of our presence. 
 Beckoning to Chow that we remain, we eavesdropped on 
 what the chaps had to tell each other. 
 
 “Do yu know, Mose,” one of the porters said to his 
 fellow, “dat last night Ah’se been carry’ng aboa’d ma Fort 
 Smith sleeper de most cu’ios set of white folks AhVe eber 
 hauled aboa’d a Pullman since de day Ah became a poatah?” 
 
 “How’se dat, Tobee?” quizzed the other darky. 
 
 “What Ah’ve picked up from der talk, Mose,” ex¬ 
 plained the porter who was leading the topic, dey se been 
 po’r folks all de days of der lives, when of a sudden like 
 der luck changed on dem, b’cause wid de few dolla s dey ve 
 been skimping togedder, dey done staked a fellah to trabel 
 to Spindle Top and dere prospect for oil.” 
 
 “An’ did he done strike it rich?” interposed the other 
 porter unable to restrain his curiosity. 
 
 “Lawdy! He suttingly done dat!” came the reply. 
 “An’ he’se done found so much of de oil dat it’s squirting 
 from the ground gwine on a twenty-five thousand barrels 
 ebery bless’d day, an’ dat*s worth ten thousand dolla’s of 
 which de white folks in ma car get a half in de split-up.” 
 
 “An’ den yu coon dared to call dem lucky cre’tures, 
 ‘cu’ios folks’?” he was upbraided by his friend. “Tobee, 
 if yu an’ Ah could clear five dolla’s ebery twenty-four hours, 
 yu an’. Ah would be tickled ’most to death.” 
 
 “Ah reckon yu don’t unnerstand de madder quite as 
 well as Ah do, Mose,” retorted the dispenser of train gossip. 
 “Det white folks Ah just done tole yu about, hab gwine 
 ’most daffy in der heads, b’cause eber since dey’ve got de 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 75 
 
 tel’gram wid de news how rich de odder fellah done struck 
 it for dem, dey se been try’ng to figger up fo’ how many 
 moah days dis here oil well is gwine to shoot five thousand 
 dolla s into der laps. Dis continn’al calc’lating has gotten 
 so on der minds, dat it done turned dem into such nervous 
 wrecks dat dey can neidder eat, sleep nor enjoy any odder 
 fun of life.” 
 
 We had come two hundred and fifty miles by the "Brakebeam Route.” 
 
 “Neidder would Ah and yu if we got hold of a snap like 
 dey’se got! Would we, Tobee?” commented Mose, the 
 porter. “Nor would we care.” 
 
 “If it hadn’t been fo’ de big tip Ah expects when Ah 
 sets dem out at Beaumont,” continued Tobee without 
 paying attention to the remark, “Ah would done tole ma 
 conductor to transfer de queer couple into a day coach, 
 
76 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 b’cause all ma odder pass’ngers been a complain’ng dat 
 de racket de money mad folks raised all night done kept 
 dem awake.” 
 
 A passer-by temporarily interrupted the gossiping of 
 the darkies, but when he had moved beyond earshot, Tobee 
 resumed the theme by admitting: *Tell yu wad, Mose, yu 
 an’ Ah is ’most as po’r as dem li’l church mice Ah done hear 
 de parson preach about, nevadeless, Ah fo’ ma part would 
 rather end ma days as a Pullman poatah den step into de 
 shoes of de rich folks ye hear yonder in the draw’ng room 
 csontinn’ng der rumpus.” 
 
 The conversation of the porters was here brought to a 
 halt by travelers who required assistance to board the 
 Pullmans. 
 
 Chow and I went our way having one object in view, 
 we were going to look for some quiet nook where we would 
 be able to catch up with the many hours of sleep we had 
 lately missed. Not having gathered advance information 
 concerning the treatment meted out by the police authori¬ 
 ties of Texarkana to tramps caught lodging in empty box 
 cars, we followed the main line of the Casey until we had 
 passed well beyond the city lines. There we hunted up a 
 secluded spot, built a campfire by the side of which we 
 stretched ourselves upon the damp ground and in less time 
 than it takes to tell of it, we had entered the realm of 
 Slumberland. 
 
 While sleeping I dreamt of the unusual adventure we 
 had encountered when dangling the Crow Limited. Again 
 I watKhad the silhouetkbs of th« passengers in the private 
 CQjnpartnaent skipping at a most marvelous rate back and 
 forth over tke night scape of Arlasaneas. I heard the porter 
 erf the Fort Smith PuUraaa reveal the inside history con¬ 
 nected with the wide awake, but utterly unfortunate couple 
 whose nervous breakdown made It impossible for them to 
 properly enjoy their high priced Pullman accommodations. 
 
TJie Snare oj the Road. 
 
 77 
 
 I dreamt I hoboed the Crow Limited all the way to Beau¬ 
 mont where in company with the sleepless pair I was 
 whizzed in a high powered automobile to Spindle Top, and 
 there beheld their boundless amazement as they gazed 
 upward to the zenith of the immense plume of crude oil; 
 which, with forbidding roaring their gusher was casting 
 above the pinnacle of the lofty derrick that had been in¬ 
 strumental in releasing the colossal gas pressure which had 
 shot the greasy fluid skyward from its subterranean prison 
 wherein during countless ages it had lain confined. Later 
 on when the folks who had struck it so marvelously rich 
 hastened back to the oil field I was present and beheld their 
 indescribable despair when the foreman of the well drilling 
 crew informed them that he had left nothing untried to 
 revive the well which abruptly had completely given out. 
 
 Cool evening zephyrs fanning northward from the 
 Gulf of Mexico, recalled us from the Land of Dreams to 
 the stem reality that unless we desired to prolong our fast 
 by another twelve hours, we would have to do some tall 
 hustling to return to Texarkana in time to panhandle our 
 suppers. Counting the ties of the Casey back to the city, 
 we were there confronted with a most unique mix-up of 
 local conditions. Texarkana, an interstate city, had parts 
 of its territory located in the states of Texas and Arkansas. 
 Local option allowed barrooms to flourish in Texas, while 
 in Arkeinsas, a prohibition state, it was contrary to law to 
 publicly dispose of alcoholic concoctions. The middle of 
 one of the principal thoroughfares of the city formed the 
 division line between the adjoining states. 
 
 We did our panhandling oa the ^Mry” side of the street, 
 as there no police were abroad to trouble tramps. In 
 succtfision each of us was taken by three passers-by into 
 restaurante and provided with meals. Having satisfied our 
 requirements, we went to the Union Station resolved to 
 take advantage of another dark night to lessen the distance 
 to the oil field. On inquiry we were informed that the neart: 
 
78 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 train to depart for Beaumont was not due for several hours. 
 To pass the time we took seats on a bench in the waiting 
 room, where we became uninvited listeners to the conver¬ 
 sations of numerous passengers who had come to Tex¬ 
 arkana from every point of the compass and now were 
 waiting to make connections with the same train we were 
 figuring on hoboing. 
 
 The talk of the strangers almost exclusively centered 
 on one subject! They were exchanging confidences as to 
 how they intended to squander the riches they expected 
 to gather at Spindle Top. The continual threshing over 
 of the selfsame theme recalled to my memory the miserable 
 fate of the unhappy patrons of the Casey’s Fort Smith 
 sleeping car and the finish of the dream I had while sleeping 
 by our latest campfire. 
 
 Nudging Chow to call his undivided attention to what 
 I wished to say, I related to him the outcome of my dream, 
 when standing by the played-out oil well into which they 
 had sunk the enjoyment with their simple living, I had 
 witnessed the woe of the hapless pair whose contentment 
 with their earthly lot had been so thoroughly wrecked by a 
 windfall of fortune. 
 
 Somewhat inclined to superstition, Chow and I became 
 so absorbed in the omens of the dream, that ere we were 
 aware of the change in our topic, we had drifted to a review¬ 
 ing of our personal affairs. As had the other fortune 
 hunters present in the waiting room, so we had come ■ 
 southward in quest of quick wealth. We were still capable 
 of enjoying recuperating rest any time and anywhere we 
 cared to close our eyes to take a snooze. That only so 
 recently we had made away with three substantial meals, 
 one right after another, furnished an even better proof that 
 we stood in no immediate need of the services of a physician. 
 Despite these priceless endowments and every bit as rapa¬ 
 cious as were the other argonauts, we were yearning to share 
 with them the endless heart aches and tribulations which the ? 
 
War and Peace. 
 
so 
 
 The Snare of the Road^ 
 
 gushers of Spindle Top were casting skyward with their 
 oceans of oil. We ended our review by repeating the words 
 of infinite wisdom uttered by Tobee, the colored Pullman 
 porter, when he spoke of the little church mice which though 
 they were virtually condemned to battle until the end of 
 their days with almost every form of adversity, preferred 
 contentment with their miserable lot to the countless real 
 and imaginary grievances which went so far to embitter 
 the existence of indolent ease lived by rodents homing in 
 granaries. 
 
 “Let’s travel the route of the little church mice, Chow!” 
 I proposed, speaking so loudly as to draw to ourselves the 
 attention of the legitimate passengers. “We know for a 
 fact that the Road of the hoboes is not lined with glories nor 
 soft snaps, but taking stock of all we have learned in the 
 course of the past twenty-four hours, believe me, Chow, its 
 afflictions are veriest child’s play when compared with the 
 burden riches acquired without honest effort invest on their 
 owners.” 
 
 “I say: Let’s change our route, Tom!” replied Chow 
 Billy, hoarsely speaking while at the same time he heartily 
 pressed my hand, and following suit to our feelings, we 
 hiked from the waiting room as if we were conquering heroes. 
 
 At eleven that night, when the “Northern Flyer” of 
 the Iron Mountain Route snaked through the lamp-lit 
 railroad yards of Texarkana, Chow and I were contentedly 
 straddling a truck beneath the observation car. When the 
 wheels began to scream as the train gathered speed, for a 
 hundredth time we passed mutual congratulations at having 
 so narrowly escaped finishing our days rolling in wealth. 
 
 Having made such a sentimental getaway from the lure 
 of Spindle Top, who could have predicted that escaping 
 one predicament we were to be rewarded for' our trouble 
 with another one, worse if anything. It was break of day, 
 when the limited arrived at Little Rock, the capital of the 
 state of ^kansaa and a division point of the Iron Mountain 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 81 
 
 Route. Espying us as we tried to dodge from him under 
 the coaches, a car inspector took after us. The chase ended 
 in our capture and his turning us over for an investigation 
 to a police officer. 
 
 Just about twelve hours after we had commenced our 
 retreat, the judge of the Municipal Court of Little Rock 
 sentenced us to serve a term on a convict farm where under 
 the vigilant care of deputy sheriffs, who made use of the 
 butts of their rifles while educating their pupils, we were 
 initiated in the rudiments of agriculture. In the course 
 of the next six months we mastered the gentle art of cul¬ 
 tivating corn, cotton, peanuts and many other staple 
 products of the fertile soil and balmy clime of Arkansas. 
 
 Although our labor yielded a neat margin of profit to 
 the lessee of the convicts, the prisoners derived no benefit 
 whatever from their punishment. This fact was best borne 
 out by Chow and I when within a few hours after we had 
 discarded the striped uniform for civilian attire, we swung 
 aboard a passenger train at the first water tank to the north 
 of Little Rock to which stop we had “piked” with this 
 purpose in view. 
 
 C HOW Billy and I had been hobo mates for a good 
 many months, when our journeying led us to the At¬ 
 lantic Coast. Here the air was impregnated with 
 the salt tang of the sea! This or memories of the past soon 
 made me aware that the ex-man o’ war’s man was harried 
 by an even stronger hankering than his love for the Road. 
 One day Chow, togged out in the full regalia of the navy, 
 returned to the hobo dump where we had our kipping while 
 working the passers-by in the streets of the Philadelphia. 
 
 “Rolled a drunken mariner for the duds, Chow?” I 
 laughingly asked, believing he had come in possession of the 
 gaudy outfit by the method commonly practiced by tramps. 
 
82 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “Not on your life, mate!” rejoined Chow, whose counte¬ 
 nance showed in a broad grin that whatever he had achieved 
 during his absence from the lodging house brought him 
 utmost satisfaction. “I got tangled up with a recruitmg 
 officer and signed up for an enlistment in the navy.” 
 
 “Aren’t you afraid of being recognized and perchance 
 condemned to a federal prison?” I gasped, remembering 
 that some years previously the naval authorities had tried 
 to terminate his aspirations with a left-handed release from 
 the service. 
 
 “Afraid?” he disdainfully echoed. “Afraid of what 
 after having found by personal experience that the treat¬ 
 ment one receives in the roughest holdover is a veriest 
 pleasure if compared with the best I have lived through in 
 the seven hard years of apprenticeship that I served the 
 Road and which have so well prepared me to willingly tackle 
 anything offering fair odds?” 
 
 “Like the ones we got when we turned our backs on 
 Spindle Top and ran afoul of Judge Ratterree at Little . 
 Rock!” I jeered, but when my warnings and entreaties 
 failed to shake his resolve to make a man of hiniself, I 
 made the most of the situation, as Chow always had proven 
 himself to be a first rate pal. • 
 
 The last I saw of Chow Billy was at the Brooklyn 
 Navy Yard. They had transferred him there to receive a 
 course of preliminary training. A non-commissioned officer 
 was initiating the “Old Timer” in company with a lot of 
 gawky “rookies” in the intricacies of the gun drill. Stand¬ 
 ing among the spectators who had flocked to the parade 
 ground to enjoy the awkward doings of the recruits, I tried 
 to draw the attention of Chow to my presence. I promptly 
 arrived at the conviction that my former comrade was ■ 
 studiously avoiding my gaze from the fact that when I 
 first noted his eyes turned In my direction a pallor in- 
 dicating fear spread over his countenance. f 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 83 
 
 A chance to inquire for the reason I had lost his friend¬ 
 ship came when during a recess the drill sergeant placed his 
 charges so near to the guard rope that their backs almost 
 touched this line that had been stretched about the parade 
 ground to prevent lookers-on from surging onto forbidden 
 space. 
 
 Slipping to the rear of where Chow stood in the ranks, 
 I leaned over the rope and then whispered: “How-do-you- 
 do, Billy?” 
 
 I scarcely recognized Chow Billy in navy togs. 
 
 Instead of good naturedly accepting my friendly 
 greeting, Chow hissed: “Have a heart and don t queer 
 my game, Tom! I spotted you long before you got hip to 
 my presence, but avoided looking in your direction as the 
 'non-comish’ who’s putting us through the stunts is one 
 of the ship mates I dosed with salty Java. 
 
84. 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 Anxious to shield Chow from the sequences of a 
 detection of his identity, I immediately quit the navy yard. 
 But ever since I have made it my business to search for 
 his moniker on water tanks and other places where tramps 
 register. As to date I have failed to connect with his hobo 
 trade-mark, most reasonable seems to be my presumption 
 that this time Chow Billy is navigating the seven seas with 
 better success than was his during his first enlistment in 
 the navy. 
 
 W OULD you mind briefly outlining the cause or 
 causes which led you to take to the Road, sir? 
 asked Gerald Davis when the traveler made ready 
 to leave the room, having concluded his engagement. 
 
 “The authorities of my home town positively refused 
 to allow transient beggars to linger within the police lines,” 
 replied Nevada Tom, “but they offered no objection to their 
 camping by a spring located some distance beyond the 
 boundaries of the community. This spring chanced to be a 
 mere stone’s throw from the best swimming hole in the 
 vicinity and in due time some of us lads strayed to the hobo 
 camp, became familiar with the manner of living practiced 
 by the vagabonds, and as ‘familiarity breeds contempt,* 
 it was easy for the rovers to induce us boys to take our first 
 box car trip ‘for the fun of it’ with the result that we caught 
 the tramping fever from which brain-affecting disease most 
 of us have since been unable to cure ourselves.” 
 
 W ITH this interesting statement the stranger closed 
 his visit. While Mr. Davis settled with Nevada 
 Tom for his services, he asked that he direct other 
 floaters as he had been directed by Arkansas Jimmy. 
 When the wanderer agreed to remember this request, he 
 was allowed to depart. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 85 
 
 Noting on his return to the parlor that Gerald had not 
 yet dismissed his chums, Mr. Davis improved the oppor¬ 
 tunity to caution the youths. 
 
 ‘ Do not let a word of your attending this afternoon’s 
 entertainment come to the ears of Bert Coleman, boys,” 
 he pleaded, “but cbntinue to listen to his accounts of the 
 Road with the same degree of interest you have heretofore 
 wasted on them. In the meanwhile I shall try and engage 
 other hoboes to lecture to you, as I am hopeful that when 
 you have heard stories depicting both sides of tramp life, 
 the actual and the fictitious, you will be all the better 
 prepared to intelligently judge for yourselves which road 
 through life will be the most promising for you to choose; 
 The one that at its worst offers an honorable existence or 
 the other that at its best quickly leads to an abyss which is 
 but slightly removed from Hades.” 
 
 The youths promised to obey these orders and then 
 were permitted to take their leave. 
 
 S OME days later, a loud voiced dispute in the back 
 yard of his residence sent Mr. Davis scuttling from 
 the supper table to investigate the disturbance. 
 
 “I wouldn’t give a rap if you’ve got here ahead of 
 me, Jersey Dan!” some one bellowed just as the owner of the 
 premises cautiously opened the kitchen entrance. 
 
 “What’s eating you, Texas Jerry?” came the retort 
 of the oth-er quarreler. “I was getting ready to brace the 
 ex-bo who makes his kippings here for a chance to tell of 
 the doings of the bums, when you moosed in and now are 
 trying to spoil the graft and —” 
 
 The speaker did not finish the sentence for Mr. Davis 
 angrily demanded to be informed why the squabblers had 
 ■selected the back yard of a private residence to do their 
 disputing and thus had frightened law abiding folks. 
 
S6 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “Pardon me, mister,” stated the first comer, excusing 
 his presence on the premises, “Nevada Tommy sent me here 
 to see you about —” 
 
 “And Arkansas Jimmy put me wise to this job, sir!” 
 interjected the other fellow not to be outdone by his com¬ 
 petitor. 
 
 “Ah, now I understand!” observed Mr. Davis. * You 
 were directed here to give discourses on the roving life. 
 
 Two hoboes had made themselves very much at home on the premises. 
 
 “Lem’me have the first show!” proposed the ruffian 
 who was introduced as Texas Jerry. 
 
 “To be fair with both of you, I shall let the law of 
 precedence govern your employment, gents,” judged the 
 master of the house. 
 
 When the tramps agreed to abide by this equitable 
 decision, they were supplied with lunches and then Texas 
 Jerry was told to return on the following evening at the 
 same hour. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 S7 
 
 While Jersey Dan was lunching, Gerald Davis was sent 
 by his father into the neighborhood to invite his boy friends 
 to their second hobo entertainment. His errand was 
 favored by Providence as young Davis found most of his 
 comrades at the “hangout” corner where they had hearken¬ 
 ed. so often to the evil counsel furnished by Coleman and 
 other unprincipled human vultures that unawares of the 
 danger they were ready, nay, anxious, to take a fling at 
 the Road. The lads accepting the invitation, hastened 
 with their friend to his home and there found the tramp 
 awaiting their arrival. When seats had been provided to 
 the late comers, the hobo began the graphic narrative whith 
 follows a brief foreword by the author. 
 
 
 1 
 
S8 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF THE THIRD TRAMP. 
 
 PART L 
 
 A FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 “How the State of Georgia Solved 
 the Tramp Problem.” 
 
 W ITH the exception of a very limited mileage cover¬ 
 ing territory contiguous to the larger cities, until 
 quite recently highways of a scientific standard 
 of construction and maintained on the same basis were 
 practically unknown throughout Georgia. In their stead 
 the mountainous districts of the state were served for 
 countryside road intercourse by hillside trails and the level 
 sections had to get along with makeshift lanes most of 
 which, in the course of every prolonged dry spell, became 
 almost impassable by the depth of the dust that covered 
 them and were turned by even moderate rains into ponds 
 and quagmires. 
 
 At the same time the state absolutely controlled the 
 disposal of thousands of convicts. Annually the labor of 
 
 s 
 
 these unfortunates was bartered to the highest bidder of 
 contractors who employed the prisoners in unfair competi¬ 
 tion with the toiling classes. 
 
 Faithfully aping the example of the sovereign state, 
 every county, city, town, hamlet and crossroad community 
 turned their real and impressed transgressors for a weekly 
 or monthly cash consideration over to the tender mercies 
 of dealers in this kind of human chattels. The revenues 
 derived from this babarian fraffic scarcely balanced the 
 expenditures of numerous “Prison Boards” and other 
 strictly political offices the incumbents of which attended 
 so well to their charge, that few of the prisoners were re" 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 S9 
 
 formed, but contrariwise, most of them succumbed sooner 
 or later to the ravages of malignant diseases contracted 
 while in duress vile. 
 
 With the advent of the automobile and its demonstra¬ 
 tion of usefulness, the need of modern highways became so 
 crying that means were promptly found to deprive the 
 lessees of the convicts of their prey and so put an end — 
 let us hope forever—to the revoltingly inhumane peddling 
 of prisoners for “revenue only.” Under the direction of 
 competent road engineers the offenders against the law 
 were then put to work on the state roads with the result 
 that two most laudable improvements were attained: 
 At a maximum of health and contentment and at a mini¬ 
 mum of cost to the taxpayers, the convicts built a highway 
 system that with a rapidly mounting annual mileage, has 
 covered the state of Georgia with a spiderweb of modern 
 country roads. 
 
 A not inconsiderable percentage of this road system 
 would still remain to be constructed had not the Brethren 
 of the Road, though unwillingly, contributed their share 
 towards the achievement of this praiseworthy work. 
 Annually, with the approach of winter, from as far north¬ 
 ward as remote Labrador and westward to the eastern slope 
 of the Rocky Mountains, an army counting into the ten 
 thousands and comprising within its ranks every class of 
 Wandering Willie, hoboed to the Land of Dixie there to 
 roam until the balmy days of spring invited a return to 
 northern stamping grounds. 
 
 In the beginning of this winter time visitation of their 
 section by hordes of uncouth tramps, imbued by a spirit 
 of hospitality, the Southerners tolerated the vagbonds who 
 begged, and if a chance looked good, stole a sustenance at 
 the expense of the native population. Not even the police 
 molested the box car tourists, unless they caught them red- 
 handed committing deviltries. 
 
90 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 In the course of the years an ever growing intolerance 
 toward the wandering beggars began to manifest itself 
 among the citizens of the Southland and especially those of 
 Georgia who suffered infinitely more than all others as 
 through their state passed and returned the legions of the 
 hobo migration bound to Florida destinations. This 
 hostility was directly traceable to the presence among the 
 vagabonds of every species of degenerate humanity who 
 had been drivenirom their lairs by the annual fall cleaning 
 of the slums by the police of the northern cities. Fearing 
 to face the rigors of the winter, these outcasts naturally 
 became part and parcel of the southbound treck of hoboes. 
 
 So indelibly were the stigmata of their viciousness 
 expressed in the rum seared visages of these perverts, the 
 rags they wore, the tough manners they affected and the 
 language of the criminals they preferably spoke, that the 
 Georgians on becoming acquainted with the foul origin of 
 these implacable enemies of society, refused them charities. 
 
 Shunned by their own race, the pariahs turned for 
 food and shelter to the colored people who in many locali¬ 
 ties in the Southland form a majority of the population. 
 To meet racial expediencies, the southern negroes had 
 been carefully trained to respect as a superior every member 
 of the Caucasian race. As a logical sequence of this tutor¬ 
 ing, aid was freely extended to the white skinned but black 
 hearted beggars who knocked on the back doors of the 
 humble homes of the darkies. Bent on having vengeance 
 for having been refused aid by the whites, the rascals set 
 to work poisoning the minds of the ignorant among the 
 darkies with gross untruths concerning the treatment 
 meted out to negroes by the inhabitants of the northern 
 states and Canada. 
 
 Although the cotton planters and other employers of 
 negro labor became quickly aware who they had to thank 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 91 
 
 for numberless proofs of disloyalty on the part of their em¬ 
 ployees, they had no redress as in almost every instance the 
 tramping thug had left the vicinity when word was brought 
 of the rebellion preached to the darkies. 
 
 When highways became in Georgia the paramount 
 issue of the day and every class of prisoner was employed 
 to provide this pressing need, there came to the long suf¬ 
 fering natives a chance for which they had yearned, to pay 
 off the score they owed the hoboes for having fomented 
 race hatred. Drastic anti-tramb laws were promptly 
 enacted — since successfully copied by other states — 
 which allowed the detention for investigation of every 
 vagranting stranger. If the-suspect could not or refused to 
 furnish proper excuses for begging a living or being abroad 
 in the land on other than strictly legitimate business, he 
 was sentenced to serve a year on a highway. 
 
 Two-fold was the aim of this seemingly severe penalty. 
 Months were required to accustom a professional beggar 
 or wandering criminal who perhaps never had done a lick 
 of work, to the beauties of honest toil. Secondly, it was 
 hoped to thoroughly eradicate from perverted minds every 
 hankering to resume lawless pursuits. 
 
 Most remarkable were the results of the strict enforce¬ 
 ment of the anti-vagrancy statutes. It enhanced the value 
 of farm products and that of every acre of tillable soil by 
 adding an appreciable percentage to the mileage of a high¬ 
 way system that afforded an easy access to the markets.- 
 It stopped a sight most repellant to the inhabitants of 
 the Southland, that of beggars belonging to the white race 
 humbly appealing to be given aid at the kitchen stoops of 
 cabins occupied by negroes. But the greatest blessing, by 
 far, was a simply astounding decrease in the number of 
 hoboes, harmless as well as harmful ones, who every winter 
 had plied their outlawed trades in Georgia. 
 
 The almost immediate returns of the Georgian cam¬ 
 paign for good roads and against worthless roadsters may 
 
99 
 
 Th€ Snare ef th$ Road. 
 
 readily be ascribed to the despatch with which the news 
 of the ajiti-tramp activities spread among the Wandering 
 Willies. How this rapid dissemination was brought about 
 and the effect this knowledge had on the acts and the 
 travel plans of the hoboes will best be appreciated when 
 paying careful attention to the interesting account Jersey 
 Han related. 
 
The Stiore of the Road. 
 
 93 
 
 PART 11 
 
 JERSEY DAN’S STORY. 
 
 “The Call to the Road.” 
 
 I T was in the year nineteen hundred and eleven and 
 after the furious autumn gales had stripped the tree® 
 of the last of the leaves. Jack Frost, too, had become a 
 regular visitor and had compelled hoboes who heretofore 
 had comfortably flopped in bo^ cars and other exposed 
 lodging places to seek accommodations in police stations 
 and other tramp dumps, all of which nightly held capacity 
 crowds of vagranting transients. 
 
 Every fall I heeded the date set by the migratory birds 
 in their departure to a warmer clime. Following their 
 lead, I hoboed until I arrived in a latitude which insured 
 immunity from all but the most frigid blasts of winter, and 
 these, even, while straying southward had been shorn of 
 much of their severity. 
 
 But this year I was yet abroad in the Northland despite 
 numerous indications of the near approach of zero weather 
 which by tramps is dreaded as one of their most formidable 
 enemies. Weak minded would be rated by his fellows 
 the hobo who, lacking the best of reasons, should volun¬ 
 tarily choose to winter in the north where besides an endless 
 array of privations, hoboing is only possible at the great 
 risk of losing one’s limbs, if not life, by freezing. 
 
 It was not dementic foolhardiness that had detained 
 me this late in the fall in a section of the continent which 
 almost any morning might be found buried beneath several 
 feet of snow, when only a few days of leisurely hoboing 
 would have deposited me in a land where stately leave* of 
 royal palms beckoned one to lazily loll in their shade. 
 
94 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 It was fear — not the everyday, commonplace sort of 
 fear, but soul-racking fright that decided me to brave the 
 rigors of an almost arctic winter,' although my original 
 itinerary had inducted a stay of six months in Florida, the 
 land of perpetual summer time. ' 
 
 While abroad in the provinces of Alberta and Saskat¬ 
 chewan, I had been forwarned by the constantly increasing 
 chilliness of the night air, that the hour was at hand for 
 hoboes to vacate Canada. Rambling eastward over the 
 Canadian Pacific Railway to Winnipeg, I had hoboed hence 
 to Duluth over the Canadian Northern Lines. 
 
 It was at Duluth I received my first intimation that 
 all was not well with Georgia, at least not from the stand¬ 
 point of hobodom, when a tramp acquaintance I met, 
 inquired: “Where’re you going to hang out next winter, 
 Jersey?” 
 
 “In Florida, of course! tiobnobbing with the million¬ 
 aires at Palm Beach and other red hot places!” I gayly 
 answered while at the same time I wondered where else 
 the fellow expected a blown-in-the-glass stiff had business 
 to be while winter was venting his fury on the Northland. 
 
 “I’ve got it from reliable ’boes,” .sighed the tramp, 
 “that lately the natives of Georgia have become ‘strictly 
 hostile’ towards everything connected with our profesh’, and 
 I can’t see how you’re going to prevent getting tangled up 
 with them when passing through their state to reach Florida 
 and return from there in the spring.” 
 
 Aware that mere threats and even lengthy terms of 
 imprisonment had never halted a hobo who had become 
 indurated against punishment of every description, I 
 shunted our conversation from this, to me, wearisome theme 
 to a more likely topic. 
 
 Stowing away aboard the Anchor Liner “Octorara,” I 
 crossed the Great Lakes from Duluth to Buffalo without a 
 soul becoming aware of my unbidden passage of more than 
 a thousand miles. It was a dreary, rain drizzling day when 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 95 
 
 I went ashore at Buifalo and not caring to buck the in¬ 
 clement elements, I hunted up a “doss house” where for 
 the price of ten cents I was furnished with a bunk for the 
 night and was allowed the privileges of the lobby until I 
 retired. To while away the dismal afternoon, I took a 
 chair and scrutinized the human income of the “Hotel de 
 Vag as they crossed the lobby to deposit their dimes with 
 the clerk in cl^arge of the lodging house. 
 
 ' Among the customers entering the hobo dump, I 
 recognized “Conchy* Slim,” a professional tramp who was 
 considered to be a most “lamous” (harmless) chap by 
 every hobo I heard mention his standing in the fraternity. 
 I greeted him and although it had been several years since 
 we met, he remembered me and accepted my invitation to 
 help pass the idle hours by a mutual exchange of travel news. 
 
 •"Conchy” is the hobo argot for Connecticut. 
 
06 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 We drew our chairs to where none of the other patrons 
 of the vagabond lodging house could eavesdrop on our con¬ 
 versation and soon were absorbed in recounting our ex¬ 
 periences. While we were conversing, I noted with no little 
 surprise, that since our last meeting, the formerly florid 
 countenance of Conchy Slim not only had lost its pro¬ 
 nounced soggy flobbiness which is due to alcohol when 
 freely imbibed, but also was tanned the deep berry brown 
 color of health one associates with the face of a human 
 living an outdoor existence. In other respects his general 
 appearance seemed to bear out my suspicion that for some 
 time he had practiced the virtue of temperance. 
 
 ‘‘What’re you sizing me up, Danny?” he unexpectedly 
 blurted, evidently having taken umbrage at my inquisitive 
 leering. 
 
 “Did you quit your razzling with booze, Conchy?” 
 I laughingly asked, desirous to hear from his lips if he had 
 reformed, knowmg as I did by personal observation how 
 preciously few in number were the hoboes who in connec¬ 
 tion with a long line of other repellant habits were not also 
 drunkards of the most degenerate type. 
 
 “Are you trying to kid me, Jersey?” he crankily re¬ 
 turned, furnishing a further proof that he was not welcom¬ 
 ing my pertinent attention. 
 
 “It isn’t just that. Slim,” I frankly confessed, “but I 
 am fairly on edge to find out if they’ve got you to sign a 
 temperance pledge?” 
 
 “No, siree!” he sharply rejoined. “It wasn’t quite 
 that, but blissfully unaware that only a few days before my 
 arrival they had enacted a lot of hostile laws against tramps, 
 I hoboed last fall into Georgia where a magistrate to whom 
 I refused to give a correct account of my past, sentenced 
 me to a solid year of slavery with a gang of convicts they 
 were employing making repairs to the public highways.” 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 97 
 
 I went aboard with the pajeengera. 
 
98 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “Harmless fellow which you were, Conchy!” I indig¬ 
 nantly cried. “How could a judge have the heart to treat 
 you like that?” 
 
 But even while I expressed my sympathy with his 
 predicament, I chanced to note a merry twinkle in his eyes, 
 and suspicioning that Conchy Slim was attempting to play 
 a practical joke at my expense, I warned: “Are you giving 
 me the straight of this affair?” 
 
 “See for yourself whether or not l am fibbing, Dan!” 
 he spiritedly retorted and then turning his hands he let 
 me see how thickly their palms were covered with callouses. 
 
 “It’s more than a month since I quit intimately asso¬ 
 ciating with road grading implements,” he whined, “and 
 these hard blisters are the least of many reminders of what 
 I went up against in Georgia.” 
 
 Then he began telling of those experiences through 
 which revelations rang a firm resolve nevermore to set foot 
 on the soil of any state, at least not while he was a hobo, 
 where they applied the profitable Georgian specific for 
 every form of public vagabondage. I should have known 
 better, but it’s in the smartest of humans to make awkward 
 breaks at the wrong moment, anyhow, I forgot myself so 
 far as to mention that on leaving Buffalo, I intended to hobo 
 to Florida by way of the cifips strung southward along the 
 Atlantic Coast. 
 
 “Which means that you’re going to pass through 
 Georgia!” snarled Conchy over whose countenance spread 
 a scowl of anger, poorly concealed, due no doubt to my light 
 disregard of his urgent precautionings. 
 
 “Why not? They won’t be able to take care of all of 
 us!” I observed, aware that as a rule every tramp was 
 cheerfully willing to risk the chance of being one of a number 
 who by their detention would effectively block any scheme 
 of punishment in accordance with the-simple expedient 
 that the sacrifice of the few saved the many from molesta¬ 
 tion. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 99 
 
 My process of reasoning did not appeal to Conchy 
 Slim, for the next instant found him reading me a riot act 
 that would have done credit to an experienced revivalist 
 or political campaigner. Over and over he repeated a 
 caution against my taking a fool’s chance in a state where 
 the "sacred” rights of the hoboes were so completely dis¬ 
 regarded that when there was no employment for road 
 builders in one section, they would be shipped where they 
 were needed, and where the catching of hoboes had become 
 such an all around profitable business, that even now the 
 police were unable to supply the pressing demand for 
 vagrants. 
 
 Although I allowed Conchy to believe that I appreciat¬ 
 ed his counseling, I was interested in his tale of woe in 
 reality only insofar as it furnished information‘that would 
 help me to avoid similar man traps. In every other respect 
 I discounted his warnings on the principle that a scorched 
 child ever afterward is sure to fear fire. 
 
 That night while I slept in the bunk, one that hap¬ 
 pened to be the topmost of a tier of five, a nightmare made 
 me believe that I was toiling on a convict gang of the kind 
 the inner workings of which Conchy had persisted to por¬ 
 tray in lurid colors up to the moment we turned in for the 
 night. While under the supervision of shotgun guards, 
 grabbing and pick-hoeing a highway, I essayed to make a 
 gefaway from bondage. My dreamland break for liberty 
 succeeded so famously, that I tumbled headlong from the 
 next-to-the-ceiling berth to the bare board floor of the hobo 
 sty. Fortunately, the accident did not result in fractured 
 bones and after a bit of squalling and a lot of squabbling 
 with fellows whom the racket had roused from their slumber, 
 
 I crawled back into my bunk where when I had made use 
 of my suspenders to fasten myself to the berth, I resumed 
 my interrupted slumber. 
 
100 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 In the morning vari-colored bruises recalled the inci¬ 
 dents of the nightmare and set me to reviewing the happen’ 
 ings since I landed in Buffalo and as ell tramps are prone 
 to superstition, I concluded that as omens presaged an 
 unfavorable outcome to a passage through Georgia, I would 
 spend the coming'winter season in the north. 
 
 Well aware that ere many days climatic limitations 
 would end hoboing, even that within closed box cars, I 
 selected New York City to be my winter headquarters. 
 Thence I hoboed from Buffalo and there found several 
 hundred thousand professional mendicants of local origin. 
 This army of beggars was vastly augmented by an even 
 more numerous horde of vagabonds and out-of-works, who 
 soon after the fall of the first snow came flocking into the 
 metropolis to scurry to shelter from the wintery weather. 
 
 Giving full credit to local conditions, I adapted myself 
 surprisingly quick to the begging game as it is worked in a 
 large city. This was some achievement as I had to compete 
 with well above a half a million of humans who from the 
 aristocratic, suavely spoken grafters connected with an 
 endless variety of professional begging societies down to the 
 lowliest of the Bowery bums depended for an existence, 
 not on honest endeavor, but on the donations which in a 
 vast majority of cases had been unwillingly contributed by 
 citizens, and which gifts in almost every instance were dis¬ 
 pensed with an even more lamentable disregard of the 
 tenets of charity. 
 
 Whenever alms culled from the passers-by in the 
 thoroughfares allowed this luxury, I lodged at one of the 
 ultra-fashionable Mills Hotels. On the other hand, when 
 business v/as poor, I kipped at one of the numerous “seven 
 cent” dumps which lined the Bowery and the byways of 
 the lower east side of the city. For provender I visited 
 dram shops maintaining lunch counters where patrons, to 
 stimulate their thirst for rum, were provided, free of charge, 
 with highly seasoned food. When in need of diversion, I 
 
The Snare of the Road, 
 
 101 
 
 called at missions, libraries and other well appointed hang¬ 
 outs where vagrants were made welcome. In many other 
 ways, I carefully copied the precepts of the city bums who 
 I watched plying the tricks of their profession. 
 
 Then came the first of the blizzards. In all my living 
 days I had never faced anything equaling for outright dis¬ 
 comfort the snow storm which broke over Manhattan Island. 
 A hurricane traveling straight from the arctic regions 
 swept into the wide mouth of the funnel formed by Long 
 Island Sound, whence it howled, developing an almost 
 inconceivable fury, through the narrow canyons betwixt 
 the towering skyscrapers of the city. Soon drifts of snow 
 blockaded the streets and with a temperature toeing the 
 zero mark, it was little wonder that the public kept in¬ 
 doors, thus effectively closing the principal source of revenue 
 of all who heretofore had grafted alms in the thoroughfares. 
 
 My resolve to winter in New York City received a 
 withering jolt when on complaining of the severity of the 
 weather to an Old-Timer who at midnight stood ahead of 
 me in the Bowery bread line, he tried to console me with 
 this comment: ‘‘Blimey, fellow, this ain’t nothing to what 
 we expects right after Christmas, and them blizzards Is 
 only soft gut when compared with the fierce weather that 
 blows along about end of February and keeps on coming 
 till well into March.” 
 
 Other vagabonds of whom I made anxious inquiries 
 confirmed everything I had heard and they largely added 
 to my apprehension as to what was yet in store for me, 
 when they averred that sometimes for weeks at a stretch 
 snow blockades and other climatic disturbances completely 
 put out of business every sort of panhandling. 
 
 Late one evening with the mercury hovering some 
 thirty degrees below zero and after I had vainly tried to 
 scare up the price of a Bowery flop, there came to me a 
 thought that henceforth returned with evermore telling 
 
102 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 effect: “Wouldn’t it be preferable even now to hobo to, 
 Florida than to remain here to battle with the arctic blasts, 
 Jersey Dan?” ran my self-interrogatory. 
 
 It was the thought of the reception awaiting all tramps 
 who dared to further impose upon the Georgians, that de¬ 
 terred me from immediately quitting New York City to 
 brave the hazards of the Road incident to a hobo trip in 
 zero weather. 
 
 Then along blew the second blizzard, one even more 
 furious than had been its predecessor. This arctic hurricane 
 held the city sufficiently long in its icy embrace to mother 
 in my mind a great idea which came to me while a detective 
 I had braceddor an alms, marched me to the “Tombs,” the 
 city prison. 
 
 “Why suffer from the cold, by starving, and to top 
 the trouble, by getting arrested, when steamers almost 
 daily sail from New York to tropic ports in South and Cen¬ 
 tral America?” I ruminated. 
 
 While I spent the next ten days in solitary confinement, 
 this idea had ample opportunity to ripen to maturity. On 
 the day of my discharge from custody, I visited the Lenox 
 Library where I studied in an atlas the lay of the other 
 Americas. The longer I looked through maps and books 
 dealing with travel in the southern portion qf the western 
 hemisphere, the firmer became my conviction that for all 
 time to come I had found an avenue of escape from both — 
 Georgians and arctic climate. 
 
 The outcome of my diligent studies was a decision to 
 pay a stowaway visit to Venezuela. In the spring I was to 
 return to the states and hereafter every fall I intended to 
 undertake another ocean trip until I had rambled through 
 all the republics south of the Rio Grande, then I proposed 
 to journey to the tropic and semi-tropic countries of the 
 'eastern hemisphere. 
 
 The project seemed so favorable, that I concluded to 
 put It into immediate execution. From the ma^rine columns 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 103 
 
 of a newspaper, I learned that every Wednesday evening 
 the Red “D” Line despatched a steamer to Caribbean and 
 South Atlantic destinations. As this was Tuesday and to¬ 
 morrow was the sailing day of the line, I resolved to take 
 advantage of this opportunity to remove myself from frigid 
 New York City. 
 
 Collecting provisions until late in the afternoon of 
 Wednesday, when dusk commenced to shroud the city, I 
 made my way to the foot of Montague Street, Brooklyn, 
 where long after nightfall I arrived at Pier No. 11, the dock 
 of the Red “D” Line. I considered it quite unnecessary 
 to have some one direct me, as the noisy confusion incident 
 to the approach of the moment of sailing of a large steamer 
 informed me where to find the liner that was to carry me to 
 Venezuela. 
 
 Ascending the gang-plank of the steamer by mingling 
 with a throng of people who were rushing aboard to bid 
 farewell to friends among the passengers, and acting to 
 make believe that the weighty gunny sack I was lugging 
 and which held my provisions and several jugs of water, 
 contained belated freight, I contrived to slip into the freight 
 hold of the vessel, where watching a favorable chance, I 
 hid in some heavy machinery. (See illustration, page 97.) 
 
 Ere long the covers were battened over the hatches 
 thus shutting out every ray of light from the deck where I 
 lay concealed. Later on I heard the wheezing of the steam 
 winches as they hauled aboard the cables and manilla 
 ropes with which the liner had been warped to the wharf. 
 Then overhead the deep bassed blasts of the siren of the 
 ship indicated that everything was in readiness for leaving 
 port. And when there came to me the noises produced by 
 the propellers churning the waters of the North River, I 
 jubilated in the darkness of my prison, for I realized that I 
 was safely on my way to Venezuela. 
 
 Terrific gales which were followed by an appreciable 
 lessening of the oceanway, announced when the ship had 
 
104 
 
 The Snare of the Road, 
 
 rounded Cape Hatteras, the storm petrel of the Atlantic 
 Coast, and had begun to furrow the warm currents of 
 the Gulf Stream. Henceforth I passed through a most 
 trying period of monotonous inactivity that I reckoned to 
 have run well into the weeks, when a prolonged blast of the 
 steam siren announced that the liner had arrived off 
 La Guayra, Venezuela, which was the first port of call made 
 by the steamers of the Red “D” Line on reaching the north¬ 
 ern coast of South America. 
 
 The manoeuvering of a tug while placing a pilot aboard 
 the ship; the passage of the vessel through the turbulent 
 breakers of a shallow river bar into the calm waters of a 
 harbor and the warping of the liner to a dock, were the final 
 episodes of my hoboing to a foreign shore. 
 
 Presently the covers were lifted off the hatches. In 
 the flood of daylight that painfully affected my eyes which 
 had become accustomed to darkness, I saw two negroes 
 descend into the hold of the steamer and there break from 
 the cargo freight destined to the local port. Although I 
 was well aware of the fact that Spanish was the national 
 language of Venezuela, I was shocked to hear the colored 
 rousters converse in a broad dialect of English. 
 
 “Got a smoke a’bout yu jeans. Mister Johnsing?” one 
 of the laborers inquired of his mate. 
 
 “Ah haben’t a bit, Rastus!” came the reply. 
 
 “They must be Jamaican negroes who in the ports of 
 the old Spanish Main replace natives wherever these are 
 incapable or disinclined to perform manual labor!” I mused, 
 repeating a lesson I recalled from my school geography. 
 
 Other stevedores joined the darkies. Among the new¬ 
 comers were several who though they belonged to the white 
 race, judging by their general appearance, had mighty little 
 in common with the many Spaniards I had met heretofore; 
 on the contrary, they all bore the unmistakable impress of 
 the Irish type. They, too, as did all the workers, conversed 
 exclusively in English. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 105 
 
 While the undivided attention of the stevedores was 
 held by their tasks, I left my hiding place. Keeping well 
 to the rear of a large merchandise case one of the laborers 
 was trucking through the freight opening in the side of 
 the liner, hence over a gang-plank to the dock, I managed 
 to reach the pier whence I hurried from the freight shed to 
 the street. 
 
 Where I stepped into the thoroughfare I saw a sight 
 that made my eyes bulge from their sockets. I had almost 
 bumped into an exact counterpart of a North American 
 policeman. Star, maze, helmet, navy blue uniform and 
 even the funny facial expression denoting an idea of vast 
 superiority over his fellow men, were reproduced — here in 
 a country fully three thousand miles to the south of Sandy 
 Hook. 
 
 / ‘‘This John Law must be a descendent of the Bucca¬ 
 neers, the seafaring riffraff of all nations, that in the days 
 of long-ago scourged the Spanish Main!” I reasoned while 
 I tried to recall a smattering of the Spanish idiom I 
 had picked up while panhandling handouts from Mexicans 
 residing in the southwestern states. 
 
 “Pardoneme, amigo,” I bravely stammered, addressing 
 the officer, “directa me a la estacion del ferrocannl que vas 
 de aqui a la ciudad de Caracas, la capitale de esta repub- 
 lica.”* 
 
 To my utmost amazement the police officer, as had all 
 the natives I had encountered, spoke the English tongue, 
 and what I heard him say decided me to carefully bridle 
 my own. 
 
 “Reckon this here creature is another one of them 
 pesky 'furriners’ they be shipping here from New York to 
 displace our coons!” savagely muttered the queer John Law 
 who then took a rough hold of my arm and marched me to 
 
 *“Pardon me, friend,” I bravely stammered, “tell me where to find the station of 
 tlie railroad which runs from here to the city of Caracas, the capital of tins repuDUc. 
 
106 
 
 The Snare of the Road, 
 
 the steamer I had just left and there halting at the passen¬ 
 ger gangway, he hailed a steward who was leaning over the 
 deck rail, sightseeing. 
 
 “Hy there. Jack!” the bluecoat shouted to the mariner, 
 using a strangely familiar sounding dialect of English, “I 
 ca n’t comprehend the lingo of this yere ‘Eyetalian’ and 
 brought him back so you alls can talk to him.” 
 
 “Send him aboard, mate,” replied the addressed, 
 “maybe we can accomrriodate you.” 
 
 By liberally making use of a sign language he had im¬ 
 provised to meet the requirements of the occasion, the 
 officer directed me to ascend the gang-plank. When I 
 stepped to the deck of the liner, I was taken in tow by the 
 steward whose continued silence gave me the cue, that he 
 did not speak Italian for which the John Law had mistaken 
 my faulty Spanish. 
 
 Following my guide into the bowels of the ship, when 
 we had arrived at a distance beyond the earshot of the police¬ 
 man, I allowed myself to remark: “Seems odd that these 
 South Americans should have developed a mania for the 
 speaking of the English language!” 
 
 “Ain’t you a dago?” blurted the steward. 
 
 “Do they like the Yankees so well that they copy their 
 ma!nners and the cut of their clothes?” I continued without 
 taking stock of his impertinent inquiry. 
 
 “Instead of dumping the likes of you aboard of our 
 steamer, the cop should have sent you for observation to 
 Milledgeville where they house the lunatics of Georgia!” 
 excitedly shouted the sea-going flunky who proved that 
 my innocent comments had frightened him by the attitude 
 of instant preparedness against attack to which he raised 
 his fists. 
 
 “How can Georgia be in Venezuela?” I corrected, while 
 at the same time I recalled that ever since the opening of 
 the hatches everything seemed to have gone topsy turvy. 
 
The Simre of the Road. 
 
 107 
 
 In South America I ran across a bIu«coat. 
 
108 
 
 Tlie Snare of the Road. 
 
 “Am I not aboard the Red ‘D’ Liner that sailed on the 
 evening of the ninth of December from Pier No. 11, Brook¬ 
 lyn?” 
 
 “This is the ‘City of Montgomery’ of the Ocean Steam¬ 
 ship Line plying between New York and Savannah, sir,” 
 replied the steward. “The dock of our company is at Pier 
 No. 35, North River, but on account of a serious congestion 
 of freight there, we were ordered to take on a cargo at Pier 
 No. 11, whence we sailed on the evening tlie weekly steamer 
 of the Red ‘D’ Line left port.” 
 
 “It was my inquiry for this information which made 
 the policeman believe I was speaking Italian, sir,” 1 said 
 without a quiver in my voice indicating my inward agita¬ 
 tion, and then I retraced my steps. 
 
 “Some cops are queer fellows!” tartly observed the 
 steward who was trailing me. 
 
 While I had outwardly simulated profound calmness, 
 I fairly quaked with fright, as I had instantly deduced from 
 what the steward had said, that I had made the vital error 
 of hoboing a steamer that instead of taking me to the 
 Carribbean Coast of South America, had deposited me 
 at Savannah, a port of the one country beneath the vault 
 of heaven I had the best of reasons to avoid. 
 
 Forced by a play of misfortune to make the most of an 
 unpleasant predicament, I promptly laid plans to make as 
 quickly as possible my exit from the domain of the sworn 
 enemies of trampdom. Luck favored this decision for when 
 I returned to the promenade deck of the “City of Mont¬ 
 gomery,” and furtively glanced over the side of the steam¬ 
 ship, I felt immensely relieved when I noted that the blue- 
 coat had returned to his regular beat in the streets. 
 
 Almost every year I had wintered in Georgia or had 
 crossed this state to reach other destinations, therefore I 
 had become thoroughly conversant with the details of its 
 geography. I knew that at Hardeeville on the Atlantic 
 Coast Line Railroad, scarcely twenty-five miles to the north 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 101 
 
 of Savannah, was South Carolina, a state the inhabitants 
 of which yet meekly put up with everything dealt them by 
 transient vagabonds. If I wished to avoid the risk of com¬ 
 ing in collision with the anti-vagrancy statutes of Georgia 
 while hoboing the railroad, one of the strictest policed ones 
 in the land, it would have proven an easy task for an able- 
 bodied fellow, which I was, to have walked the short distance 
 to neutral soil and safety, had it not been for the Savan¬ 
 nah River, a navigable stream that formed the boundary of 
 ’the adjoining states and which therefore I had to cross if 
 I followed either the railroad track or the public highway. 
 
 Had I elected to walk the track, I would have found 
 a drawbridge the tender in charge of which had earned 
 national notoriety by having allowed no tramp tO sneak 
 over the bridge. Taking the highway, I would have met 
 aboard the ferryboat that conveyed the road traffic over 
 the river, a mate who had never permitted a ticketless 
 passenger to cross to the opposite shore. 
 
 Penniless and lacking the nerve I required to undertake 
 in Georgia the panhandling of passers-by in the street for 
 the price of a ticket to Hardeeville, either by train or ferry, 
 I decided to walk to Augusta, a city located at the head of 
 river navigation where several bridges spanned the murky 
 Savannah. 
 
 Footing it from Savannah, I followed a wagon road 
 paralleling the Central of Georgia Railway, a branch of which 
 led from Millen to Augusta. Late in the afternoon while 
 plodding along the highway, I was overtaken by a typical 
 cotton planter of the lesser grade who was driving a one- 
 mule wagon. Hailing the farmer, I asked to be allowed a 
 lift. 
 
 “Be ye one of the tramping varmints, sir?” sharply 
 interrogated the planter while he eyed me most suspiciously. 
 
 “A sailor, sir!” I storied when the tenor of his question 
 proved the Southerner loathed vagrants. 
 
no 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “If that be the case, you’re welcome to climb aboard,” 
 he invited while he checked his mule. 
 
 When I had taken a seat beside the farmer, he sent the 
 mule on the way. We had traveled quite a distance when 
 nettled by the assurance that had I stated the truth con¬ 
 cerning my vocation the planter who had given ample 
 evidence that his dislike of strangers was exclusively di¬ 
 rected toward hoboes, would have refused me passage on 
 his wagon, I broached a subject for discussion I hoped would 
 reveal the reason for his pronounced aversion. 
 
 “It seems you do not approve of hoboes, sir?” I 
 volunteered. 
 
 “They aren’t of no earthly account, the wandering 
 beggars!” he gruffly admitted, concluding a theme from 
 which I had promised interesting returns. 
 
 Following a prolonged period of silence, to call my 
 attention to the really commendable condition of the high¬ 
 way, the Georgian drawled: “Ain’t this some cracking 
 fine road, sir?” 
 
 “I have yet to see one to beat it!” I fawned ever intent 
 on remaining in the good grace of my host. 
 
 “As straight as the plumb line of a mason; as hard and 
 smooth as plate glass, and just take a peek at the dandy 
 bridging and guttering is has got!” shouted the enthusiastic 
 planter unmindful that his loud comment was frightening 
 the mule. “And would you believe it possible, sir? It’s 
 less than three years since this road was in such a terrible 
 fix that if I wanted to reach Savannah in time to take 
 advantage of an open market, I had to leave my plantation 
 with this wagon drawn by a couple of strong buck mules 
 before the stars quit twinkling overhead and they were 
 there again when I drove home from the city. These days 
 with one mule pulling the wagon loaded with three bales 
 of cotton each weighing no less than a quarter of a ton, 
 even on days when it’s raining as if the sluices of heaven had 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 Ill 
 
 / 
 
 been left ajar, I have no trouble to drive to town in a few 
 hours, and actually, I have forgotten what it feels like to 
 have to choke down a warmed-over supper.” 
 
 “It must have cost you taxpayers a lot of money to 
 make these improvements?” I chimed to lead on the agri¬ 
 culturist in what I surmised to be his favorite theme of 
 discussion. 
 
 The planter appreciated **Gc)od Roads hoboes had built. 
 
 “Hardly anything, considering that before we tackled 
 the job I couldn’t have given my plantation away, while 
 nowadays bankers and other sorts of money lenders are 
 fairly hounding me with offers to advance funds with the 
 land for a collateral,” he stated, “and besides, we have used 
 the busted-up highway to profitably rid ourselves of hoboes 
 by compelling them to learn how to work for their living. 
 
112 
 
 T M Snare of the Road. 
 
 ‘'You may place water before a horse, but you cannot i 
 make him drink!” I tritly observed, firmly believing that | 
 
 no tramp who was not inclined to toil could be forced to do i 
 
 ■<{ 
 
 so. \ 
 
 “I happen to be acquainted with the superintendent | 
 in charge of our local convict outfit and he tells me that if ] 
 once a hobo gets heft to what’s wanted of him, he makes ■; 
 not only a most willing worker but when Sunday or a rainy ] 
 day compels a suspension of the work, he’s the most forlorn \ 
 looking chap in the whole prison camp,” he gleefully as- I 
 sured me. ^ 
 
 “Are hereabouts the police authorities rough on I 
 
 tramps?” I interrogated, aiming to verify one of the con- ; 
 tentions Conchy Slim had preached. 1 
 
 “They certainly are that, sailor,” came the answer of i 
 the farmer, “and if the record of your’n won’t stand a close ■ 
 overhauling, you had better steer clear of our sheriffs as 
 they might mistake you to be one of them rum guzzling 
 galoots who used to scare and insult our women and other- . 
 wise did everything possible to make the countryside an ; 
 unsafe place of residence.” i 
 
 Our conversation was here interrupted by the sharp 
 blasts of an auto horn. The driver of an automobile com¬ 
 ing up in our rear desired right of passage for his car. The ' 
 tardiness which the planter displayed while turning out to 
 make driving room for the machine, furnished the cue that - 
 he held almost as little love for autoists than I knew he had ' 
 for hoboes. When the car chugged abreast of the wagon • 
 and I noted that it carried only one occupant, a portly 
 gentleman, I braced him for a ride. 
 
 “Isn’t your wagon traveling sufficiently fast to suit 
 your needs, sir?” laughed the automobilist, evidently be- ' 
 lieving I owned an interest in the property of the 
 planter. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 113 
 
 “I am a stranded sailor and was walking to Augusta 
 when the owner of this vehicle picked me up, sir,” I pro¬ 
 tested, but even then the gentleman evinced no inclination 
 to accept my request. 
 
 "I reckon he’s all right, sir!” interjected the farmer, 
 seconding ray plea. “I didn’t mind giving him a friendly 
 boost.” 
 
 “If that’s the case, you may travel with me to Millen 
 which is better than half way from here to your destination, 
 sir,” offered the stranger while he stopped his car. 
 
 My transfer from the wagon to the automobile was 
 soon accomplished and ere long the machine was whizzing 
 westward at a fair rate of speed. Some miles beyond the 
 point where he had taken me aboard, the autoist revealed 
 the reason he had acted so chary ere halting his car. 
 
 “I had never denied a ride to anyone asking for this 
 favor, sir,” he explained, “but in all my days I shall never 
 again extend this privilege to a hobo since the last roving 
 beggar I allowed to travel in my automobile proved the 
 average standard of character of his kind by abstracting 
 a wallet from one of my coat pockets while, so he thought, 
 my attention was focussed on the guiding of the machine.” 
 
 “That’s what I would call rewarding a charity with 
 brutal ingratitude, sir,” I admitted, while at the same time 
 I remembered many instances where fellow tramps who I 
 had previously assisted repaid my kindness while I was 
 sleeping by stripping ihy feet of shoewear and by enacting 
 other tricks only perverted intellects could have concocted. 
 
 ‘T am Banker Emerson of Millen and Savannah, sir, 
 my latest host introduced himself. “In the last mentioned 
 city I am connected with the management of one of the 
 leading banking institutions. Some years ago close atten¬ 
 tion to my sedentary occupation impaired my health to 
 such an extent that specialists I consulted prescribed an 
 outdoor existence. This prescription brought in its wake 
 
114 
 
 The Sruire of the Road. 
 
 the removal of my family to Millen from whence I motor 
 every morning to my bank and return home after close of 
 business. 
 
 ‘^One 4ciy while I was en route from Savannah, I had 
 the pleasure I used to derive from the assisting of my fellow 
 men, effectively spoiled by the rascal who stole the wallet 
 containing valuable papers I was taking home for perusal. 
 Fearing a murderous attack, I held my peace until I stopped 
 the car in front of the Millen police station where I had 
 officers take charge of the thief. He settled well for his 
 crime, insofar as I was concerned in its atonement. For a 
 solid year he was forced to donate his labor towards keep¬ 
 ing this highway in repair and so did his share to appreci¬ 
 ably reduce my annual outlay for oils, gasolene, auto re¬ 
 pairs, not to mention the compensations I used to pay to 
 teamsters who now and anon had to be called in to drag 
 my machine from mud and quicksand sinks in the road and 
 from holes in the floors of poorly constructed bridges.” 
 
 Henceforward our conversation lagged as I failed to rid 
 myself of a vague suspicion that on our arrival at Millen 
 the banker might repeat the tactics he had followed in the 
 case of the thieving scoundrel by turning me over to the 
 police for an investigation of my antecedents. Fortunately, 
 my fears proved to be baseless. He halted the car at his 
 palatial mansion and then inviting me to step around the 
 house to its rear entrance, he provided me with an ample 
 supper. While I finished the meal Mr. Emerson came into 
 the kitchen! Handing me one of his calling cards, he 
 advised that should a local representative of the law inter¬ 
 fere with my person while in Millen, I was to present the 
 card and if this proved insufficient to protect me against 
 arrest, I was to direct the troublesome party to telephone 
 for instructions to the banker. 
 
 In high spirits I left the home of the Southerner whose 
 latest kindness made it certain that for the time-being my 
 liberty would be safeguarded in Millen better* than anywhere 
 
Th& Snare of the Rogd. 
 
 115 
 
 else in the state of Georgia. For this reason I decided to 
 remain in town overnight and continue my foot journey to 
 Augusta in the morning. While hunting for a lodging place, 
 I strayed to the station of the Central of Georgia Railway, 
 where I made the welcome discovery that a door of the 
 waiting room had been left unlocked. I cautiously opened 
 this door, entered the dark waiting room and there groped 
 until I found a bench of which I made a bunk. 
 
 The “Night Hawk of Millen” routed Jersey Bill. 
 
 The penetrating rays of a flash lantern roused me from 
 my slumber. Guided by many similar experiences I had 
 encountered, I realized even before I opened my eye lids, 
 that I had run afoul of the law. Sure enough, a watchman 
 placed me under arrest on a charge of trespass and then 
 searched my belongings for concealed weapons. 
 
116 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 "I catch most of my hoboes by simply leaving a door 
 of this waiting room unfastened, sir!” jeered the John Law, 
 ^vhen he had finished his futile search for contraband 
 articles. 
 
 “The chilly night air makes a first rate hobo trap of any 
 warm waiting room a door of which has purposely been left 
 ajar!” I crankily opined, feeling much out of sorts at having 
 been so neatly snared by the town guard. 
 
 “Justice Hawkins hands to lads following your calling 
 never less than a solid year at hard labor with our convict 
 road building outfit,” consoled the grinning night watch, 
 continuing his theme, “and I know by the fact that I still 
 have to catch one of your kind a second time, that the good 
 judge is doing great work in behalf of suffering society.*' 
 
 The pride displayed by the watchman at having lent 
 a helping hand with the recruiting for the chaingang at the 
 expense of the hoboes, aroused me to my peril. It had the 
 effect to recall to my drowsy intellect that for the better 
 security against loss which this hiding place afforded, I 
 had placed in the sweat band of my hat the card Mr. 
 Emerson had presented to me for use in just this kind of 
 emergency. I deftly lifted the pasteboard from its retreat 
 and handed it to the night guard who deciphered its d escrip- 
 tion by the light of his lantern. 
 
 “Are you acquainted with Banker Emerson, sir?’* 
 sharply asked the policeman, while he returned the calling 
 card to my keeping. 
 
 “I came with him in his automobile from Savannah and 
 ate my supper at his residence,” I informed my custodian, 
 “and if you doubt my statement you’re welcome to call 
 up Mr. Emerson on the telephone.” 
 
 “If Banker Emerson is your friend, you are not a hobo, 
 sir,” philosophized the officer, “therefore you may consider 
 yourself at liberty.” 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 117 
 
 “You’re an astute judge of human nature for I am a 
 shipwrecked sailor, sir,” I fawned, hoping that this flattery 
 would divert the trend of his thoughts to a subject fraught 
 with less threatening possibilities for my personal safety. 
 
 The stand-by that twice within a day had proven its 
 worth was but partially successful in this instancer In the 
 heyday of his life the watchman had followed steamboating 
 on the Ashpoo, Pee-Dee, Santee, Yemassee and others of 
 the numerous navigable rivers draining the southeastern 
 states. When for some time we had pleasantly chatted of 
 matters connected with the working aboard of ships, he 
 abruptly returned to the subject I wished to avoid. 
 
 “Did your friend. Banker Emerson, tell you how a 
 year ago last fall a crooked hobo tried to relieve him of a 
 wallet?” the officer led off. 
 
 “How did it happen, sir?” I blandly queried, preferring 
 for obvious reasons to feign total ignorance of the affair. 
 
 The talkative town guard not only repeated the par¬ 
 ticulars of the crime I had received at first hand, but also 
 mentioned details which proved most amazing. 
 
 , “All my living days I have strenuously opposed the 
 hasty penalizing of hoboes, sir,” he continued when he had 
 related all Mr. Emerson had revealed, “as sometimes 
 deserving out-of-works who should have received protec¬ 
 tion, are liable to be railroaded to servitude on the highwa)^. 
 On this occasion Judge Hawkins could see no valid reason 
 why the court should make haste slowly and wait on an 
 invectigation of the record of a culprit who humbly pleaded 
 to be punished for his transgression. My objections were 
 overruled and the scoundrel who had taken improper ad- 
 antage of Mr. Emerson was given the lenient penalty the 
 magistrate usually assessed against common vagabonds. 
 
 “The fact that the fellow had foiled my plans, made m« 
 all the more anxious to get hold of his correct pedigree. 
 With this purpose in view, I had postal cards printed show¬ 
 ing a likene.ss of the convict, his Bertillon msasurements, 
 
118 
 
 Tha Snare of the Road. 
 
 a brief outline of his personal characteristics and ending 
 .with an urgent request for information. In the course of a 
 few days my suspicions that our penitently acting.prisoner 
 wasn’t quite as innocent as he had made the good judge 
 believe, were fully confirmed when letters and postals 
 galore began to arrive at police headquarters announcing 
 that we held in custody one of the most dangerous of hobo 
 desperadoes. 
 
 “When I confronted the rascal with his criminal record 
 he had the cheek to laugh me full in the face while he in¬ 
 quired if we of the police expected him and his kind to pro¬ 
 vide themselves with a day book in which had been entered 
 a duly attested account of their criminal transactions. 
 
 “But I got even with the tricky crook!” gleefully cried 
 th« trapper of tramps. “In Georgia every prisoner employed 
 on works of public welfare is rewarded for examplary be¬ 
 havior with a commutation of one-fourth his prison term. 
 I made it an obligation to have the court suspend this 
 privilege in the case of ‘Conchy Slim’!” 
 
 “Conchy Slim!” I echoed, unable to control my aston¬ 
 ishment to hear a tramp denounced who among his fellows 
 was rated to be a harmless hobo, but when I took note 
 that my ill timed exclamation had roused the suspicion 
 of the John Law, I quickly added, “if that isn’t some 
 queer sort of a name!” 
 
 “That’s what it is, sailor!” agreed the watchman who 
 then resumed the narrative. “Ere Conchy Slim took his 
 departure from the chaingang, he sent word by a trustee, 
 that though it would take him all his days, he would even 
 the score for my having been instrumental for keeping him 
 in Georgia three months longer than he deserved. Since 
 then I have been waiting for him to make good his promise 
 but have cause to suspect that he’s going to slight me as did 
 the other hoboes who made dire threats but never allowed 
 me a sesond chance to catch sight of them in Millen.” 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 ' 119 
 
 The whistling of an incoming train ended our conversa¬ 
 tion. Saying that it was the midnight freight bound for 
 Augusta, the night watch hurried from the waiting room 
 to hunt through the cars for trespassers. He had not 
 returned when the freight began to leave the station. 
 Stepping to the platform, I watched the passage of the 
 cars. Just then I recalled that only fifty-four miles in 
 the direction of the departing train lay the state of 
 South Carolina, the “Promised Land” of every hobo 
 marooned in Georgia. 
 
 The passing of a box car with a door standing ajar 
 ' aroused me from my thoughts, when I noted that the car 
 was loaded with “Pittsburgh Feathers” above which and 
 below the rafters of the car had been left, by chance, a 
 space of sufficient size to allow a hobo to squeeze himself 
 indoors. Throwing caution to the four winds, I ran to the 
 side of the car, swung aboard and crawled into the vacant 
 space which I barricaded with chunks of the rough coke. 
 Without interference I traveled to Augusta and when the 
 red aurora of the rising sun flamed above the horizon, I 
 had crossed into neutral South Carolina by way of one of 
 the bridges spanning the Savainnah. 
 
 Hoboing northward, the ever increasing frigidity of 
 the weather retarded my progress so that it was middle of 
 March ere I arrived in the section of the states from where 
 the blizzards had driven me. On my way and ever after¬ 
 ward I tried by every means at the command of the Breth¬ 
 ren of the Road to get in touch with Conchy Slim, as I 
 fairly ached for the chance to recount to him the re¬ 
 markable events 1 had encountered since we met in the 
 Buffalo hobo sty. 
 
 Only last summer I ran across the man I had combed 
 the continent to find. Panhandling passers-by in the streets 
 of Des Moines for the price of a meal, I met with no response 
 to my appeals as the thoroughfares of Iowa’s capital had 
 been worked to a frazzle by consecutive generations of 
 
120 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 impudent beggars. Then tliere came into view a gentleman 
 who was pushing a baby carriage by the side of which strode 
 a richly dressed lady who by her proud beaming at the 
 infant occupying the perambulator, readily proved to be 
 the child’s doting mother. 
 
 “Here comes my fall-guy!” I mused, practical experi¬ 
 ence having taught vagrantdom that a citizen of prosperous 
 appearance when in company of a lady will rarely ever 
 refuse a plea for financial aid. 
 
 “Pardon me, friend,” I whined, when on accosting him 
 the guardian of the baby buggy had halted. “Can you aid 
 a starving fellow with a nickel?” 
 
 The stranger accepted my appeal, but while he fumbled 
 through his pockets for a coin, I noted with discomfort that 
 his eyes were sharply searching my countenance. 
 
 “Aren’t you Jersey Dan?” he suddenly asked, using 
 imperative language. 
 
 “That’s who I am, sir!” I crestfallen whimpered, believ¬ 
 ing that the police of Des Moines by pushing a perambulator 
 containing a live infant ahead of them while patroling the 
 streets, had concocted a novel scheme to catch bummers 
 off their guard. 
 
 Instead of taking charge of me, the gent fairly shouted: 
 **Have I changed so greatly that you failed to recognize 
 your friend ‘Conchy Slim’?” 
 
 Only when I had assured myself beyond a possible 
 chance of committing a blunder that he who had spoken 
 bore the features of the notorious cnminal, I ejaculated: 
 “Sure enough! It’s Conchy Slim!” 
 
 When we had exchanged greetings, he introduced me 
 to the lady who, as I had surmised, was his wife. Then 
 Conchy urged me to accept a coin of large denomination, 
 but I declined to touch the money as it was against the 
 ethics of the Road for a “proper” tramp to receive an alms 
 from a fellow hobo. However, when both he and his better- 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 121 
 
 half, insisted that I accompany them to their home and 
 there join them at supper, I did not have the heart to refuse 
 their invitation. 
 
 While we were on our way, I contrived to whisper to 
 Conchy that I would like to speak to him of matters I 
 would not want his wife to hear. This request resulted in 
 his turning over the care of the baby to his spouse and when 
 the had trundled on ahead to a distance sufficient to withhold 
 
 Bracing a “fall guy.” 
 
 our secrets from her knowledge, we fell to recounting ex¬ 
 periences we had encountered since we visited with each 
 other at Buffalo. 
 
 Conchy related how he had met, wooed and won the 
 girl who became his wife. I furnished a detailed account 
 of the stowaway ocean trip that had so oddly deposited me 
 in Georgia and described the incidents of the eventful auto 
 
122 
 
 Th& Snare of the Road. 
 
 ride from Savannah to Millen. Then I remembered, 
 that I still carried the banker’s calling card which 
 I had frequently used to convince hoboes who had doubted 
 my statements, that it would be best for them to beware 
 of Georgia. 
 
 When I handed the visiting card to Conchy Slim so he 
 could read its address, I remarked: “Banker Emerson and 
 the night guard of Millen have supplied me with a complete 
 record of your criminal defections and you certainly have 
 pulled the wool over the eyes of—” I stopped short in 
 the sentence for I noted that Conchy’s ruddy complexion 
 in a ti'ice had given way to the ashen pallor which comes 
 with mortal fear, and having'heard of criminals who kept 
 their dependents in dense ignorance as to the true character 
 of their vocation, in the belief that this crook was working 
 this scheme for the benefit of his loved ones, I quietly 
 continued, “which facts because of your present relation¬ 
 ship are best left unmentioned.” 
 
 “You’re a square guy, and believe me, there aren’t 
 many like you running loose over the land, Dan!” Conchy 
 Slim assured me while he reached out his hand and then 
 pressed mine to express his silent appreciation of the course 
 I had volunteered to follow in his behalf. 
 
 We soon had become so interested in other, but less 
 explosive bits of Road gossip, ere I realized that we had 
 arrived at our destination, we stood before Conchy’s resi¬ 
 dence, a cosy brick bungalow which, so he proudly advised 
 me, had been built to his especial order. 
 
 On entering the home, I was agreeably surprised to 
 note that its furnishings and other fittings bore the hall¬ 
 mark of refinement, a fact that evinced a commendable 
 desire on the part of the criminal to comfortably house his 
 little family. 
 
 Although my curiosity mounted high to have Conchy 
 Sliih repeat to me the history of the criminal exploit that 
 had provided the funds which had enabled him to purchase 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 123 
 
 his home with its costly contents, I hesitated to broach this 
 subject as I feared that my host would point blank refuse 
 to incriminate himself and most likely would insist that I 
 refrain from meddling with his private affairs. 
 
 While we were at supper a most singular notion obsessed 
 the crook. He demanded that instead of-addressing him 
 with “Mister,” I should use his hobo moniker “Conchy 
 Slim.” As his wife was present, I looked askance at this 
 demand, and when he persisted, I tried to ignore the quetr 
 request. 
 
 “Don’t fear that a compliance with my husband's 
 wish will offend me in the least, sir,” smiled my hostess who 
 had noted my embarrassment. “Ere Conchy Slim asked 
 my hand in marriage, he frankly reviewed for my enlight- 
 ment every phase of ,his checkered career. While I fully 
 disapproved of the unlawful methods he had employed, 
 now that he had reformed, I accepted hini without reserva¬ 
 tion as I preferred, by far, to be the helpmeet of a man who 
 had vanquished the Road, than to cast my lot with some 
 one who almost any day might fall its prey.” 
 
 “Did you say that your husband has settled down — 
 quit the roving life, madam?” I recapitulated to insure my 
 ears had correctly caught her words, and when she nodded 
 her head in affirmation of her statement, turning to her 
 husband, I blurted: “Have I erred when I suspicioned that 
 you had come in possession of your property by illegal 
 means?” 
 
 “It depends from which point of view one sizes up the 
 deal, Dan,” laughed Conchy Slim. “But you can rest 
 assured that everything I have accomplished since you and 
 I bunked in the hobo dump, may easily be duplicated by any 
 able-bodied tramp, provided he deliberately bums trains 
 about Georgia until they treat him to a term with a road 
 building crew, where while studying a useful trade he also 
 would assimilate a hankering for the virtues of industry 
 and sobriety that wUf prove of incalculable worth when on 
 
124 The Snare ef ths Road, ^ 
 
 returning north he takes hold of one of the many opporttl- 
 nities to practically apply the knowledge he had so cheaply. 
 acquired.” 
 
 “You don’t say!” I cried all agog to hear it averred that 
 it was within the bounds of possibility to wring prosperity 
 from a punishmejit hoboes considered the acme of mii- 
 fortune. 
 
 Instead of making a further comment, Conchy Slim 
 lifted from a tray standing nearby upon a table, a business 
 card which he handed to me for perusal. 
 
 / ' 
 
 JOHN D. YEGGDONE 
 Highway Engineer 
 
 Des Moines, Ia. 
 
 read the address on the card, one which furnished me with 
 the clue why Conchy Slim had become an ardent advocate 
 of the Georgian scheme by the application of which, foul 
 and sloven vagrancy was converted into an almost invalu¬ 
 able asset of common welfare, a method he once had de¬ 
 nounced with an even greater fervor. But ere I could 
 question him in regard to this strange transition, he fore¬ 
 stalled my intention by voluntarily giving a review of the 
 causes which led to his change of mind. 
 
 Returning from Georgia he had resumed his yegglng, 
 but it did not take long for him to convince himself that 
 
The Snare of the Kjjad. 
 
 12S 
 
 the year he had unwillingly devoted to the pursuit of hard 
 labor, had totally unfitted him for a resumption of his 
 former outlaw^ existence. With no other avenue left 
 open, unless he desired to descend to the level of a common 
 stew bum, one who warmed up handouts in castaway tin 
 cans, he took a fling at the straight but narrow path. 
 
 As it was the case with the majority of transient vaga¬ 
 bonds, so Conchy had left his good folks ere he had mastered 
 a useful vocation. Although he found himself enormously 
 handicapped by this lack of a trade and also by the constant 
 strain brought on by the soul harrying uncertainty of never 
 knowing at which moment some former associate in crime 
 might recognize him, either to blackmail him or denounce 
 him to the authorities, he steadfastly persevered in his new 
 ideals. 
 
 One day a chance came his way to practically demon¬ 
 strate his knowledge of the construction of standard high¬ 
 ways. Profiting by this almost insignificant proof of his 
 capability, he branched out until his services were so sought 
 after that in the course of a few years he became the foremost 
 road contractor of the middle west. 
 
 “If in your roving you should drift again to Millen, 
 Dan," said Conchy Slim, concluding the story of his success, 
 “be sure to convey my sincere compliments to the night 
 hawk I have to thank that the master highway builders of 
 Georgia donated to me an extra three months of careful train¬ 
 ing in my present honorable vocation. Tell him I am having 
 the revenge I promised him in settlement of his, then little- 
 appreciated service by taking as many hoboes into my 
 employ as I can induce to remain with me, and say, that 
 besides the many who have reformed, there are at the 
 present sixteen others with me who will never straighten 
 the kinks of the roads of Jenkins County, Georgia, as I 
 pay them fair wages, treat them humanely, and what's 
 worth most, teach them a profession that is one of the few 
 nowadays not overcrowded.” 
 
126 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 Late at night I left Des Moines bound for Omaha and 
 the West via the Rock Island Lines. Along with me went 
 a commission Mr. Yeggdone had conferred on me when I 
 bade farewell to him and his faithful wife, 
 
 ‘'Should you run across tramps who act as if they were 
 yearning for a helping hand to drag them from the dismal 
 abyss which separates honest endeavor with its countless 
 blessings from the Road with its endless ruin, Jersey Dan,” 
 he softly said, “tell them that Conchy Slim after everything 
 he has passed through, has become firmly convinced that in 
 the long run it would be a great deal more profitable to 
 them to accept employment with a friend who has their 
 best interests at heart, than to hobo onward until they will 
 be made to do so under stem compulsion by the police.” 
 
 Since then to tramps with whom the Road threw me 
 into contact, I have narrated a story based on the curious 
 culmination of the hobo career of the Iowan highway 
 builder. So often and with such an ever increasing fervor 
 have I repeated this sermon on human life as it is in reality, 
 that the commission the ex-yegg has bestowed on me, is 
 commencing to prove itself a veritable boomerang. ,One 
 of these fine days I may be found facing Mr. Yeggdone in- 
 his private office at his Des Moines headquarters, there to 
 plead for a chance to reform under the guardianship of an 
 ex-hobo who besides purely financial rewards had gained 
 so immeasurably much when he bravely turned his back 
 to the Road. 
 
 W ITH this rather frank acknowledgment that he, 
 too, was fast approaching a stage when he would 
 be ready to quit the thankless wander life, Jer¬ 
 sey Dan concluded the entertainment. When he had 
 been handed his pay and had promised to send on other 
 tramping story-tellers, he left the residence. 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 127 
 
 Taking prompt advantage of the favorable impression 
 he judged the narrative of the tramp had made upon the 
 plastic minds of Gerald and his comrades, Mr. Davis, 
 believing the proper moment for this procedure had arrived, 
 extracted from each of the lads a solemn promise that 
 henceforth they would shun the association of Bert Coleman 
 and other unscrupulous scoundrels whose first aim of life 
 seemed to be to entice boys from their parents. Then 
 he allowed the youths to de;part for their homes. 
 
 S CARCELY an hour had elapsed since supper, than 
 a furious ringing of the telephone bell sent Mr. 
 Davis hurrying from his studies in the library. 
 “Can I immediately get Mr. Davis?” was asked by an 
 impatient party from the other end of the line 
 
 “He’s speaking, sir!” snarled the master of the house, 
 annoyed by the unseeming haste of the caller. 
 
 “This is the chief of police, sir,” stated the inquirer, 
 revealing his identity. “We want you at headquarters to 
 look after the interests of your Gerald.” 
 
 “Why is your department detaining my —?” inter¬ 
 rogated the thoroughly aroused father who was prevented 
 from finishing the question by the hanging up of the re¬ 
 ceiver at the other end of the telephone. 
 
 Although Mr. Davis tried by every means to be re¬ 
 connected with the police bureau, his efforts were brought 
 to naught by a continual use of the party line by other 
 subscribers. Unable to promptly hear further particulars 
 of the affair which, he felt assured, must have been a most 
 serious offense as it necessitated the detention of his eldest 
 by the authorides, ,he decided to hasten to the police 
 station tp personally investigate the matter. 
 
12S ^ 
 
 The Snare of the Road. 
 
 “It’s a grave violation of the law your Gerald and 
 several other lads have committed, sir,” was the greeting 
 which met the wTOught-up Mr. Davis on entering the private 
 office of the chief of police. 
 
 “I pray that it is not one of a character which would 
 bring in its wake shame and disgrace for their innocent 
 families, chief,” stammered the frightened father, no longer 
 able to control his anxiety. 
 
 “They attacked a man and battered him so mercilessly 
 that we had to call in a doctor to dress his injuries,” re¬ 
 ported the police official. 
 
 “Have they committed an act of highway robbery, 
 sir?” inquired Mr. Davis whose countenance had visibly 
 blanched under the strain of the accusation he had heard 
 made against his son. 
 
 “Their crime is even worse than the one you men¬ 
 tioned, sir,” he was informed by the officer. “They assault¬ 
 ed a citizen and in accordance wnth their confessions, they 
 would have cheerfully murdered him had it not been for 
 the timely arrival of one of our patrolmen W’ho ran to the 
 aid of their helpless victim.” 
 
 “A deliberate attempt to coldbloodedly murder one 
 of our citizens!” hoarsely echoed Mr. Davis. 
 
 “Yes, sir!” shouted the police official who then drop¬ 
 ping his voice to a whisper, barely audible, continued, 
 “they laid out Bert Coleman, the scamp of whose perni¬ 
 cious activities you complained to this department.” 
 
 A further explanation was abrogated by the entry into 
 the office of a file of prisoners who were guarded by a detail 
 of bluecoats. 
 
 “Wliat awful things have happened, Gerald?” cried 
 Mr. Davis w'hen he saw his eldest at the head of the line 
 of culprits who were the same lads attending the hobo 
 lectures. “Make a clean breast of the charge booked 
 
The Sfuire of ike Road. 
 
 129 
 
 s^inst you and the other young hot heads, as perhaps only 
 a frank confession might save you boys from serving a term 
 in a penal institution." 
 
 “When I left the house after supper, sir," stated young 
 Davis, obeying his father’s counsel, “I went to *our’ corner 
 where I met the boys you see present here. While we were 
 discussing the narrow escape we had had from being induced 
 to hobo to the western harvest fields, an undertaking which, 
 
 "Your Gerald committed a serious trangression, ar,” 
 said the chief of police, greeting Mr, Davis. 
 
 as you have so often warned, almost invariably inocculated 
 adventuresome minors with the wanderlust, along came 
 Bert Coleman. True to the promise we had made you that 
 we would never give to our tempter another chance to 
 poison our minds, we served him then and there with a 
 notice that henceforth his company would not be welcomed 
 by our crowd of boys. 
 
130 
 
 TTte Smr$ of Uie IRsmi, 
 
 ‘'Instead of gracefully accepting our tart invitation 
 for him to retire, Coleman insisted that we reveal to him 
 the reasons for our unfriendly action. So he would under¬ 
 stand the more readily our position, we repeated to him a 
 gist of the tramp life stories we had heard the unfortunate 
 outcasts relate in our parlor. These truthful accounts of 
 their disgusting existence which had so effectively spoiled 
 his shrewdly laid plans, so angered him that in a burst of 
 rage he roundly denounced the poor fellows whose revela¬ 
 tions had warned us against the Road with better results, 
 by far, than all the ‘talking-to’ we had received by friends. 
 
 “We objected to his blackguarding our absent bene¬ 
 factors. He wouldn’t desist. Hot words followed. Then 
 blows were exchanged. The next instant we were on top 
 of Coleman and punishing him so soundly that we feel 
 satisfied we have hammered from his mind every desire to 
 deceive other lads in the way he had tried to harm us. The 
 scrap was brought to an end when the coward bellowed so 
 lustily for mercy that his frantic yells were heard by Officer 
 Randall who ran to his assistance. Unable to comprehend 
 our explanations, the policeman arrested all who had a 
 hand in the fracas and then convoyed us for an investiga¬ 
 tion to police headquarters.” 
 
 “How much will it cost to settle this affair out of court 
 and so avoid a lot of publicity unpleasant to the families 
 of the youngsters, sir?” asked Mr. Davis, addressing the 
 chief of police. 
 
 “Not a red cent, sir!” came the surprising answer. 
 “Furthermore, the prisoners may consider themselves dis¬ 
 charged from custody if they will agree to comply with a 
 personal request I desire to make.” 
 
 “And what may this condition be, sir?” eagerly asked 
 Gerald Davis, acting a spokesman for his companions. 
 
 “I yffsh to reserve to myself th# privilege to be the first 
 one who congratulates you, young men,” smiled the chief 
 of pohce while he b^;an to shake hands with the lads, one 
 
The Snare of the Bmid. 
 
 131 
 
 The lads wiped the stfeet with the rascal. 
 
132 
 
 The Snare of the Bmtd. 
 
 after the other, “for having downed one of the two-legged 
 vipers who by their dissemination of untrue accounts are to 
 be blamed more than all other agencies combined, that the 
 United States and Canada are face to face with the solving 
 of a professional tramp problem of proportions so huge that 
 its equal has never been recorded in the annals of the human 
 race.” 
 
 When Mr. Davis and all others present in the office 
 had emulated his example, the chief of police suggested 
 that they take a look at the subject of their common loath¬ 
 ing. They found Bert Coleman occupying the bare board 
 bunk of a prison cell. The physician who attended him had 
 so swathed his swollen features in cotton bandages that the 
 jail warden had to inform Coleman who had come to pay 
 him a visit. 
 
 didn’t mean to do any harm to the lads!” weakly 
 whined the fellow who had lightheartedly undertaken to 
 blast the careers of boys who had blindly trusted him as a 
 friend. 
 
 “You didn’t?” thundered Mr. Davis, when he heard 
 this, the favorite excuse of every cornered coward. “No 
 home in the land can be considered properly safeguarded 
 until the national government has made it impossible for 
 tramps and semi-hoboes of your class to nullify the efforts 
 of parents to give honorable citizens to the nation.” 
 
 After Mr. Davis came the chief of police to tell at 
 leng[th what was the exact opinion of the police authorities 
 of hoboes in general and fellows of Bert Coleman's ilk in 
 particular. 
 
 Returning to the lobby of the police station, they found 
 awaiting them the fathers of nearly all of the boys who had 
 had an active part in the undoing of Coleman. As Mr. Davis 
 had done on receiving his telephone message, so these gentle¬ 
 men had hurried to police headquarters to ascertain what 
 
The Snare of the Road. 
 
 133 
 
 had happened to their sons. The details of the affair 
 were soon explained to them and then their fear was turned 
 into a genuine rejoicing that the enemy of home and family 
 ties had been placed where, for the time-being at least, he 
 could do no further harm. 
 
 O N the following evening Texas Jerry put in appear¬ 
 ance at the Davis home to fulfill his engagement. 
 He was agreeably surprised when he was handed 
 double the amount of the pay earned by the hoboes who 
 had actually lectured, but he little appreciated a curt com¬ 
 mand which went with the free-will offering, that it was 
 desired of him to keep on going. 
 
 For some time all tramps who had been directed to the 
 Davis residence by others who previously had benefited 
 by the novel enterprise, were paid for their trouble, but 
 when the continual calling at the house by vagranting 
 strangers had assumed the proportions of an annoyance 
 it was Gerald Davis who put an abrupt halt to the imdesir- 
 able patronage when he chained to the garden gate a vicious 
 bulldog he had borrowed for this purpose and also posted 
 a warning notice within easy view of intending hobo visitors. 
 
 As a result of a popular demand for his exile, Bert 
 Coleman, on finishing a long term of imprisonment in the 
 local workhouse, was driven from the community by the 
 authorities. 
 
 Every boy in town henceforth made it a special obliga¬ 
 tion to search out runaway lads. Instead of providing these 
 weakminded youngsters with food and treating them as 
 heroes, a commonplace mistake, they did their best to 
 induce the wayward ones to return to their proper homes 
 and anxious parents. They also made it their business to 
 ferret out scoundrels who attempted to duplicate the tactics 
 Coleman had practiced, and tramps who had minors 
 
134 
 
 Th$ Snare of the Mjooif, 
 
 vagranting with them over the country. To these heartless 
 rascals they meted out an even rougher measure of treat¬ 
 ment that had proven its effectiveness when applied at 
 first instance on the person of Coleman. 
 
 Parents who heretofore had thoughtlessly permitted 
 their sons to loiter on railroad premises, street comers and 
 other favorite loafing places where they were constantly 
 exposed to the danger of mental and moral contamination, 
 saw to it that the lads were provided with memberships in 
 a Young Men’s Christian As^ciation, the Boy Scouts and 
 other societies praiseworthily working for the welfare and 
 the advancement of the younger generations. 
 
 Mrs. Ridder, whose wise counsel had so wonderfully 
 benefited all parties concerned, became the heroine of the 
 neighborhood and an object of grateful esteem by those she 
 had saved from terminating their lives as homeless out- 
 oasts— despised even more than ever was Cain. 
 
i'-V' r ^ 
 
 > 
 
 4 
 
 
 ' V 
 
 M ' ' . 
 
 
Where to Obtain Our Books 
 
 To The Public:--’ 
 
 You may purchase our books of any news 
 agent» aboard every passenger train in 
 the United States, Canada, England and 
 Australia, carrying a “news butcher ” At 
 depot a«d other news stands and all up-to- 
 date news and book stores. If residing far 
 in the country, your store keeper, always 
 willing to handsomely add to nis income, 
 may get our titles for you by requesting us 
 to furnish him the address of the nearest 
 jobber. 
 
 To The Dealer:— 
 
 The American News Company and all its 
 branches throughout the United States and 
 Canada, and all other reliable jobbers from 
 Halifax to San Diego and from Dawson City 
 to Key always carry a complete line 
 of our books in stock. 
 
 Dealers should furnish a fair display to our 
 books and explain to customers that their 
 text is not only good reading but also that 
 the stories are based on actual experiences 
 of the author who wasted thirty years on 
 the road. 
 
 Do not bury the “A. No. 1 Books” on shelves 
 or in train boxes, but give them a chance to 
 prove their great selling merit. One copy 
 sold is sure to bring a sale of the complete 
 set to the reader, so entertaining are the 
 stories which cover every interesting phase 
 of tramp life. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 Erie, Pa. The A. No. 1 Publishing Company 
 
 U. S. A. 
 
A List of the Books 
 ON Tramp Life 
 
 WRITTEN X. n M ^ TRAMP 
 
 by MM AX* AUTHOR 
 
 THE FIRST BOOK 
 
 LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF A-No. 1 
 
 THE SECOND BOOK 
 
 HOBO-CAMP-FIRE-TALES 
 
 THE THIRD BOOK 
 
 THE CURSE OF TRAMP LIFE 
 
 THE FOURTH BOOK 
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TRAMP 
 
 THE FIFTH BOOK 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF A FEMALE TRAMP 
 
 THE SIXTH BOOK 
 
 THE WAYS OF THE HOBO 
 
 THE SEVENTH BOOK 
 
 THE SNARE OF THE ROAD 
 
 THE EIGHTH BOOK 
 
 FROM COAST TO COAST WITH JACK LONDON 
 
 THE NINTH BOOK 
 
 THE MOTHER OF THE HOBOES 
 
 THE TENTH BOOK 
 
 THE WIFE I WON 
 
 The Author has cWuHy avoided the of ^nytf.mar 
 
 would be unfit reading: for ladies or children. 
 
 A complete set of these moral and entertaining books should b.» n. 
 every home. 
 
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