The Ely miner., 1899-05-17
A VAGABOND
By Mark Lennox
TIE WAS as fine specimen of tramp

II WAS as line q specimen OF tramp
humanity as ever 1 had come
across, and almost became reconciled
to the storm that had driven me into
the ramshackle wayside inn. He bore
his rags with inimitable grace, and
there was good-temepered, independ-
ent, whimsical something behind his
devil-may-care appearance that was
simply irresistible-a strong dash of
poetry and romance, moreover, so often
found in your lord of the lane and high
way.
His first words disappointed me,
confess, for he spoke with the unmis-
taxable tone and accent of a gentleman,
and l was growing trifle tired of peo-
pie who had ''come down" in life.
When he had finished the second pot of
ale that he permitted me to pay for l
limited, somewhat rudely perhaps, that
no doubt he had seen better days.
''Seen better days? l should hope 1
have-and worse ones, too; many of
them. Better days? Did you ever
come across man on his beam ends
that hadn't seen better days? Talking
of lies, it'll have struck you by this
time, no doubt, that man is a lying ami
NAL. No? Oh, well, that's because
you're thinking of one kind of liars
only. They're not all of one kind,
grant you. There's the man who de-
ceives others. He's a meterialist, if
ever there was one. But then there's
the man that deceives himself-and
that's your idealist. See?"
L did see, and tried to draw him out
further, but he did not really wax elo-
quent until he was deep in his post
prandial glass of toddy and his huge
frame loomed dim from out a smoke
cloud. 1t was then 1 asked my man to
spin me yarn.
He raised himself from his lolling
posture, and, planting both elbows on
the table, looked at me with those half
quizzical, half-pathetic eyes of his.
what queer fish you steady-going,
respectable people are!" he said, at
last. you're keen as ferrets on tales
of wild life-and low life, too, for that
matter. But that's neither here nor
there. Do you believe in a regular
tramp and vagabend repenting and
turning round-for good, mean?"
Don't your parried, laughing at
the suddeaness of the question and
wondering what he was driving at.
''I've got to, he answered, dryly, "for
I've seen 'em do it-actually seen them
do it, and I could no more keep them
back than baby could have DONE"
He stopped, and, signing, veiled him
self in melancholy smoke.
'How heart-breaking!" murmured,
sympathetically.
When he emerged again from the
cloud the melancholy had departed.
Now, did you ever hear of respec-
table and law-abiding citizen suddenly
taking a headlong plunge into tramp
dom and rowing on in happy lawless-
ness for the rest of his natural life?"
1 gravely shook my head.
He pufed away in deep meditative-
ness.
"Why shouldn't that be possible as
well az the other?" he said. ST never
did see why it shouldn't, and-I'm bit
of a mental and moral philosopher, you
l. t
worth the name who didn't pick up
that trick on the tramp-and 1 thought
I'd try and settle the question by an eX-
pertinent in flesh and blood.'
You actually tried to turn "a"
ga decent man into a vagabond. EX-
actly. Hark at the wind screaming up
the hillside. 1t was just such night
7 frcf P,,f
let you have it in regular order.
''After / once determined on my ex-
pertinent / tried to get hold of decent
subject. / was in London at the time,
trying to get the hang of the place, and
/ didn't know respectable soul there
except little Tom Allen, poor city
clerk, who lived in the same house as
did. And hewas respectable nervous,
lily-livered sort of a fellow, who went
to chapel regularly, and had never
tasted anything stronger than water
in his life. He drudged at his desk all
day, and came home at night to tea and
Pollok's Course of Time,' or some other
equally entertaining work, and he'd
been living this monotonous little life
of his for close on 25 years when came
across him. And fixed on him at once,
for I saw the untamable little tell-tale
devil in the corner of his meek and quiet
eye, and / knew he'd do. Strange,
though, how bit of the devil turks in
the mildest of creatures, and bit of
the brute, too, for that matter. But let
that pass-except that it brings me
hack tO what t said inst now about Won
straight folk being mad on wild tales.
/ had found that out long ago, and used
it as the thin end of the wedge with
Tom Allen. I'd sit up in his bedroom
with him by the hour, on his patent