The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1875-12-18
TRAMPS-WHERE THEY COME FROM
A REMEDY FOR THE NUISANCE.

]
from the great numbers of all ranks anc
classes that have streamed across the Allan
tic since the war. At the close of that
struggle we were suddenly awakened to
the fact-we had almost forgotten it-that
we were very great and very admira bile
people-endowed with all the virtues and
capable of all the heroisms. We awoke
and found ourselves famous-too big and
too ready for fight to take an affront from
anybody. And so the sight-seers of the old
world have come in shoals to edo" Amer
lea, with more or less wisdom. Flippant
critics of what we were-like Mr.. Dickens
have come to join in the praise of what
we are, and to carry home our money as
part evidence of our excellence, especially
our good taste. Statesmen have run over
in the recess, and political economists have
taken the leisure of their vacation to have
look at Amerca-to lecture us Oh the
wisdom of giving up our national policy
and adopting theirs. After consulting for
a month or so, with admiring lotteries of
Free Traders and editors, they have gone
home full of the notion that the United
I States is ready for a change Of policy. The
old type of British tourist, who came IL
America to search for offence and write
caricature, seems to be hardly represented
among them. 1t is lucky that Mr.. Tucker
man has preserved for US some specimens
of nearly extinct Species now fully rep
resented only among the excellent old ladies
who edit the Standard.
But other and less desirable visitors have
come, and in still greater numbers. The
sueH mob of London is not Without repre-
sentatives on our side the Atlantic, and
next year we shall have nearly the whole
body in attendance on the Exhibition.
Perhaps it would be advisable to secure
the attendance of few of the best detec-
tives of this and other European capitals
to look after them, as it is not likely that
our own will prove themselves equal to
that occasion or to any other.
There is another class of European visi-
tors that have come in very plentifully since
the war, and show no disposition to cease
coming-we mean the English tramps.-
During last Summer we spent some weeks
in the vicinity of the Pennsylvania Rail-
road, and there made the acquaintance of
this species, with which every body is more
or less familiar. They trudged along the
dusty roads in twos or threes, with their
whole earthly possessions tied in hand
kerchief and hung from stick. Their
hands and faces were brown with exposure
and SUM- burn; their ceuntenances lit only
by dull and stolid cunning, empty of ali
serious purpose Of aspirations, and devoid
even of that hearty, bumptious look that
ordinarily distinguish the Englishman; their
clothes sometimes ragged and always shah
by; their life a life of the largest independ-
ence. They are mostly men, comparatively
few women of the class having yet reached
the New World. They live by the unwill-
ing gifts of quiet country people, who fear
to refuse what they ask; their nights are
spent in the corner of barn, or behind a
hay stack, or even under the shade of a
tree-any corner serving their purpose, and
long years of exposure making them utterly
Indifferent to circumstances.
They do not come to seek work; they
will not accept it on any terms. Neither
they nor their fathers have lived by work
for centuries past, and they do not mean
to begin now, when they have reached the
land of plenty, their promised land of milk
and honey. To dodge work, even the light
est, has long been the chief problem of
their class; these specimens of it were born
to the heritage of pinched idleness, to
the aristocracy of misery and of rags, with
out respect. The tread mill of the casual
ward in British work-house is the only
thing that ever yet taxed their muscular
energies, and they have no intention OF
dying of toll in the New World. They are
come to teach to a weary and toilsome
and in return for it they ask that their lit
tie wants be modestly supplied out of our
abundance.
In all seriousness they are becoming a
around the city. Their presence and their
demands are becoming decided drawback
to the advantages of a rural home; to leave
ladies alone in country house during the
BILE thing, and is growing every day still
more unpleasant. The people who suffer
from their presence are crying for relief
through every channel by which they can
ties, but as yet without result of any kind.
| Such mode of life strikes an American
as curiously irrational and undesirable, as
we'll as blame-worthy. And yet the tramps,
if they were in possession of all the facts,
might put in plea in its defence that would
challenge consideration. They might say
| "After all we and we alone live in freedom,
as your own ancestors in the past, and a
considerable part of the human race in the
present, conceived of freedom. We alone
give no hostages to fortune; we alone keep
ourselves independent of circumstances in
the highest degree possible to human be,
ings. Farming and house building are very
we'll for those who like that sort of life
but the world got on before men began to
enclose farms and to build houses. Those
prehistoric races, whose traces your archa.
ologists find all over the world-did they
not live just as we doc And your Aryan
forefathers who supplanted them and drove
them into the out-of the-way places of Eu.
rope-were they not Nomads like ourselves
The Indians who owned America, and
whose rights you have never yet Cancelled
in any Substantially just way-were they
not Nomads too? We and you are the
children of tramps-Nomads if you prefer
the name-and do you wonder at finding
in US the old impulse, the old love of the
most absolute independence Your philo
sophical historians say that that impulse
lasted till we'll into the Middle Ages, and
formed one of the chief motives to the Cru.
sades. If they would look at their OWL
times they would see it at work quite as
powerfully, not only in those who have
| broken with society and it's conventions