New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-04-25

button, there being barely enough in tn
office to set the paper up.
The first impression l gathered upon
meeting Dingle was that he had been bull
of too soft material and too hastily dried
His head looked as thOugh before harden
ing it had bagged down from the crOwI
into the chin, the first named corner Of hif
and covered with ehOrt and exceedingly
curly hair, while the latter was preternatu'
rally large and graced with a fuzz tina,
gave it every appearance of being mOuldy.
His mouth was so full of bad teeth that a
few of them hung outside his broad lips
His legs were encased in pantalOons that
arOned for being world too wide by com
ing only half way down from his knees to
his ankles; coarse wooden socks that had
once been blue left a section OF under
pinning visible in all its native scragginess
and acquired griminess at the top, and
| we're swallowed up in coarse and gaping
army shoes at the bottom. A coat was
buttoned close to his throat to conceal the
utter lack of any other body garment, and
such little dilapidated soft hat as you
sometimes see at minstrel show was
perched upon the back of his Uranium.
His stay in Omaha upon this occasion
extended over period OF some two weeks,
divided between complete intOxicatiOn. par
tial intOxication, work, and lOating. During
this time he was thrown down stairs by an
impatient "boss' not less upon an average
than once day, and invariably came up
again. perfectly Indifferent to oaths and
he could not work. Finally he appeared
one morning preposterously drunk and
abnOrmally bright to demand his travelling
| card from the financial secretary OF the
union, and announced his intention OF
| going to Sioux City.
| did not meet Dingle again until two
wears after, when he turned up in the Inter-
Ocean office, three-fourths gone in liquor,
and otherwise unchanged. There goes a
friend of mine, l heard him remark to a
brother tramp, as passed up the stairs;
| "I'm going to strike him for quarter,
| which he forthwith did
During the conversation by which he
gently led up to his financial proposal, he
| informed me that he had, upon the occasion
of his departure from Omaha, walked to
Sioux City, thence to st. Paul, and on
through Chicago and Detroit to Canada,
down to New York and along the Atlantic
Mississippi to st. Louis and the Missouri to
Omaha again, then across Iowa and back
to Chicago, working a few days, more or
lees, wherever he could find work, and pro-
ceeding on his way whenever it seemed to
him it was time to be moving. There was q
walk!
And vet euch walks are not at all unfre-
Guent. Tramps of Dingle's cast never ride
in a railway car. Tom Crowley, for instance,
has worked in every city in the United
States, and never rode in a car but once IN
his life, which happened thus:
One evening OF q hot day Tom was plod-
ding through Wheaton Ia town near this
city, } tired out, hungry, and withal superla
lively eleepy, when in crossing railway
track his eye lighted upon a grain train
with tuning engine at it's head standing
beside warehouse. The bad whisky
wherewith Tom had just before soaght to
his limbs had confused his knowledge of the
points of the compass; and he fell into the
error of supposing this train bound tor
Chicago. Wherefore he secreted himself
by some means in one of the cars, and went
to sleep. When morning broke he crept
out of his place and looked abroad upon a
sodden stretch of prairie, interrupted in
the near foreground by few frame houses
vivid dash boards on the fronts o them"
las he puts it,, a small elevator, and
couple OF stunted trees, all seen through
drilling cool ain. He instituted inquiries
and discovered that he was 100 miles further
from Chicago than he had been the previ
GUS day. With sigh and heartfelt male
dlction upon all railway rolling stock. he
damned his hands down into his pockets and
turned his face once more toward Lake
Michigan. And from that day to this Tom
has never been known to ride.
Thomas Jifferson Crowley, that's me
name," he explained to the officer of the
Union who received his card in st. Joe,
upon his first advent there, several years
ago. The explanation was necessary, for
the "memb er's signature" which the trav
eler is obliged to write in the left of the
certificate of unionism, which all square
men must carry, was in this case most
extraordinary scrawl, utterly unreadable
IL putt that there in temporary acciss of
paroxysmal insanity, superirjewced by
sthrong drink
If Dingle looks as though hastily made of
too soft material, Crowley appears to have
been made the last one OF lot, of what
material was left. He is wofully under.
sized. His lower lip does not tit, being too
large; and his nose is so very small that in
expanding at the point to the proper size of
of it have been entirely absorbed, SO that
from cheek bone to the cheek. bone is An
unbrOken expanse Of very tight and highly
freckled skin. As for his wardrobe, he
never had any except such as Providence
tire " in his way; and his mind, on subjects of
sucf general information as are usually cult
waited, is total blank; wherein he differs
from Dingle. who has collegiate education,
and in lucid moments is man of such charm
ing, even magnetic conversational powers,
that in listening to him one forgets his
sGualid appearance and wretched life.
Dingle, moreover, has the mind and eve of
philosopher, and has taken in the moral
side of what he has seen to such advantage
that he discourses upon social economy with
the tongue of master and the earnestness
of true phiianthropist. 1t has been his
To foil al ~c
life than most OF the brethren of the craft
have ever moved upon, and from high to
low society he knows it all. Crowley, on the
other hand, was bred in the cutters Of New
York, and never knew anything better than
he knows to-day.
Perhaps there is no tramp of greater
fame than Peter B. Lee, vino is handsome
man, witty fellow, meteoric drunkard,
and a first class compOsitor. The last time
l saw Peter was shortly after Dingle's
exit from Omaha. l was
tho ''proof- hook" in the Herald |
newsrOom one day, running down an out |
error in that mornings paper, |
when there stalked in very tall party |
with red hair one arm, and plug hat, |
who halted in the middle of the floor and |
annOunced:
"Im Theodore Savage, the one-armed |
printer. Does any one here know me!"
"A uhaninous snout VI Laughter anu re-
answered him, whereupon his |
features relaxed the stern gravity that had
,louded them, and very broad grin dis
closed two rows of teeth that had every ap.
3earance of having been carved out of vel
Ow soap.
"You fellows needn't think l want to
'aise subscription he went on to say.
I've got money. l don't give (dashJ for
my OF you. Pm fixed. l don't want any
work, either. I'm high-toned," and he
Illustrated the elevation of his tone by i'm