Los Angeles daily herald., 1890-01-20
THE TRAMP.
Comments by One Of the
Brotherhood.
THE STORY OF A LONG TRIP.

THE STORY OF A LONG TRIP.
The Route Taken From Denver to
Los AngeleS-Adyentures
with the Indians.
The following paper was written for
the HERALD by one whose misfortunes
made him tramp, and who is now in
San Francisco on his way to Australia.
The American tramp is an institution
purely and distinctively American, and
his duplicate is to be found nowhere else
on the face of the globe. The movable
British loafer, the "sundowner" or
"whaler" of Australia, and the Russian,
donothing, who masquerades as pill
grim and calls himself by certain nine
jointed designation--of which one end
resembles q crash in china warehouse
and the other sounds like the yelp of lost
soul wandering over the steppes of Ge.
henna-are all more or less on the same
plane, but still they are unlike him in a
hundred respects. The Briton suffers
from want of elbow.room. He
treads a comparatively narrow circle
round the hereditary beer house where
his rude forefathers fuddled their stolid,
fishy lives away, and the idea of striking
out into the great unknown makes him
shudder. He alludes to it as "furrin
parts" and regards it with dread. The
Russian pilgrim is tramp on larger
scale, but he is a pious one, which the
American certainly is not, and he bears
with him as a general rule an odor
which distinguishes him sufficiently
from all her tramps living
and dead. It is q subtle
and awful perfume, strangely suggestive
in its age and general character of the pro.
visions which went bad in the Egyptian
.commissary department during Pharaoh g
memorable pursuit of Israel; that is.
supposiEg those provisions had been left
to tester through all the intervening ages
on the Red Sea shore and we're only now
attaining their maximum strength and
maturity. And is proud of this odor too.
He carries the choice perfume stacked
up in his matted hair. He drags it be-
hind him hitched on to the tails of his
massive pelisse. He has it about him
everywhere, in fact, and, along with it,
his unctuous shuttle, and the grease and
crumbs adhering to his beard, to his ire.
mendous boots and to his NANCY fur cap.
All these things help to make up the
complete picture of tramp such as the
noble American brotherhood would eject
with acorn from their midst
ANOTHER TYPE.
The Australian "sundowner" differs
from his trans-Pacific brother chiefly in
the fact that he washes regularly. He
does this, however, not from any deep
rooted love OF cleanliness, but because
he lives in climate where it is easier to
wash than to remain unwashed. If
to Nevada or Wyoming it
is probable that in the sudden revulsion
of feeling, in the wild sensation of relief
from wesrisome obligation, he would
remain unwashed until he became
walking pestilence. He is called "sun-
downer" because he invariably arrives
at the hospitable ranch and demands
just as the orb of light dis
appears below the horizon and work is
over for the day. Then having obtained
his rations and his nights shelter he
disappears once more upon his way.
His victuals are more regular and his
life less precarious than that of his con-
genor of Columbia, and he smokes
and drinks tea instead of chewing to-
bacco and imbibing coffee. The gram
matical form and syntax of his bias
phemy also serves to mark him as an
exotic and an alien.
- OUR DOMESTIC ARTICLE.
The American tramp himself is prsc
tically indescribable. Yet on the whole
he is the mere creature of circumstances,
and the bitter satires leveled at him by
the press are mostly undeserved. He
owes his origin in great measure to that
most fendish of earthly inventions-the
climate of the States east of the Rocky
mountains. By profession he is gener-
ally worker, not a loafer, and during
the summer months he tolls cheerfully
in the far northern Territories, and works
hard and drinks haro until the cold
breezes of autumn warn him to change
yards bowling in his rear he collects his
Texas or California, to spend the winter
III b Clllu6t0 Wu0I0 u WuttO LA0A may live
in peace under the shadow of his own
vine and fig tree, and be at rest. About
half way to his destination, however, he
generally drifts into the grateful warmth
of q saloon, and remains there until he
has mortgaged all his earthly posses
sions down to his boots and his
collar, and when he finally emerges
it is as q full-blown tramp, with
felonious designs on clothes lines and
hen.roosts and fixed resolve to live
somewhat at the public expense until
his destination is reached. In his new
capacity he haunts back doors and climbs
over fences into back yards contrary to
the canons of civilized nations; lie raids
provision stores, thus rendering himself
liable to be cut off like flower in his
bloom; and he grows daily more dingy
and unshorn and ragged until he be-
comes mere travelling smudge on the
face of creation, with hat like ruined
pancake and suit of clothes that re-.
semble those of an insolvent scarecrow.
Finally he disappears over the visible
horizon and vanishes out OF society, to
reappear at later date, perhaps, re-
habilitated citizen, though the mode of
his recovery is mystery which will
never be explained in this world and
which we trust will be buried in merci-
full oblivion in the next.
THE JOITRNEY REGUN.