The Topeka state journal., 1897-07-10

hard to be always sat on
You see tramps by the thousand. but
the Weary Willie of the comic papers
is rarity: Does he exist at all? Not
much in the west: There is too much
walking this side of the AlIeghenies
to suit him. 1t is too long between
drinks On the fiat Jersey sands be-
tween New York and Philadelphia he
prospers and grows red-nOSed. All
real Weary Wilies have acne of the
nose. The laboring man who is look
ing for work may De sunburned to the
color of harvest poppy, but there IS
nothing the matter with his sebaciOuS
glands. He will bleach out if he gets
indoor work, but Weary Willie's nose
will not. He represents the lowest eS-
tate to which man falls; his nose is
the brand nature has put on him, and
he himself is a brand for the burning.
He has been marked bad order and
will soon be taken off the track, but
there are millions more to take his
place
Few have ever seen a tramp that was
good looking. They all look like they
were made out of wood by the Indians
who carve the totem poles in Alaskan
is the inner man that makes the outer
man The face that has no thoughts
behind it can have no lines of beauty
Sentiment carves the lineanents, but
it does it from the inside If the SEN
timent is bad it fills the face full of its
freakish Fuckers, that wise men may
tice- The unobserving get buncoed.
But a tramp's face-the average
tramp's-expresses little more than
dullness. His mind is asleep. If it
were awake, the tramp would cease to
be one. He might be an anarchist;
it takes brains to be an anarchist.
Thinking does it-tOO much thinking,
maybe. Overwrought natures, under
suffering of themselves or for others,
become anarchists They are the pain of
the wound, but they are not the heal
in "A I'm a
BILE and more methodicaI who study out
remedies are the hope of the world.
Yet the anarchists may be useful in the
philosophy of our civilization Like
the nerves of the body, they tell where
there is something wrong.
Every tramp knows that there is in
every house a closet full of cast off
clothing, and when he wants something
to wear he goes and asks for it. The
tramp has what few wOrkingmen have:
the privilege of choice. If he begs a
coat at one house. and it doesn't suit
his ideas in color or cut, he slows it
away under a culvert and begs an
other at some other house. Tramps
will gather up shirts until they have
five or six of them on, one over an
other, and look as bulky as an alder
man and as shabby some of them.
When tramp goes in swimming, the
creek is in danger of going down be-
fore he can get his clothes off The
greatest difficulty of a tramp is to get
shoes that will be comfortable for
walking purposes, his feet are so much
larger than the prevailing sizes at the
houses where he calls for them He
tries a number seven shoe, with the re-
suit that his foot describes a rainbow
like arch, and soon bursts its
bounds. a tramp never gets a shoe
without hole in it The hole is not
in the same place, but it is always
there TrampS ought to be as good
an authority on the weakest spot in a
shoe as a shoemaker. BY long OBJ
servatiOn of the footwear given them,
they can tell where the first tell-tale
crack, the crack of doom-for the shoe
will appear.
In winter a tramp is most miserable
me trarnps can all go south, or they
don't The calabOOse is the tramp's
lodging house. He gets more COM
pany in the winter and gathers up ideas
and vermin- He eats prison meat,
which it seems, judging from the COM
plants we hear so frequently in To-
peka, is never sent to the jail until it
is fully determined that it is tainted.
he cracks great quantities of rock
which is used to make suburban roads
unfit to drive on, and he stops you on
the street in the dusk to ask you for
mysteries of the whole tramp tribe is
the universal use of that phrase "a
little assistance" Did any tramp ever
appear ghostlike at your elbow and
breathe into your ear a request for
money that he did not call it "a little
assistance?" No 1t is a badge of
tHeiH lidde, q pdSSNOEO, d Sn1DDOletn- a
watchword, a tocsin, a motto a bIa-
zonry- 1t sums up the spirit and SEN
timent of Trampery; "a little assist
ance'; it is all they want; cents or
10 cents. It is the humbleness of the
tramp's demands that makes him so
harmless He is on the point of being
crowded off the earth and realizes the
evanescence of all things terrestrial No
farther ahead than the next handout
or plug of tobacco does he cast his pro-
phetic eye; and he wouldn't undertake
such wild flights of fancy "A hours
ahead as the daring govern cent
weather bureau, which is never ashamed
of its muItitudinous errors.
Every municipality in the United
States needs public improvements. The
wealth of these communities could be
doubled in five years by them There