The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-21
HOBO TELLS HISOWN STORY
FUNERAL JIM ON THE JOYS OF
 THE SIMPLE LIFE.

sun or Minister, Dut NOEA h"u AN Attractions for Him--Lilxes His Free
 dom and wouIdn't Trade Jobs With
 Any one-some Tramps are Educated
 NIe=.
 Funeral Jim. with three of his bud dies" was hanging around the freight yard waiting for the psychological mo ment for climbing into an outgoing freight
 Just then along came a reporter for the Washington Times, and, being of an evidently beguiling temperament he soon had Funeral Jim handing out the story of his life, interesting as be- ing a specimen page in the unwritten literature of hobodom.
 My dad was a Methodist minister, began Funeral Jim, "and he had it fig ured out out that I was to walk in his footsteps
 The minister proposition didn't sound very good to me until the old gent began to talk missionary stuff swell tales about convertin the Chinese, Africans, &c. didn't care q whole lot about the converting part, but the talk of the foreign lands got me up in the air and I agreed. When I was sixteen I was bundled off to a boarding school to prepare for a theological course, dad getting a reduction on the price on &C., count of being a minister, and me wait ing on table and doing other little stunts which kept down the expenses. I never did like work, and it didn't take me very long to find out that a trip to China in my mind, was not worth the work I was doing to get it.
 T wrote home to the old gent asking him to let me quit. Nothing doing. Then I made up my mind to beat it as soon as l could. I found another kid that felt the same way I did, and we determined to hike together, New York was to be our get off place, but we couldn't get the money and had 10 wait.
 Vacation time came,and when we got some money for our railroad fare home we bought tickets for the big town instead. I've never seen my dad since. Wrote to him once, and he an- swered me telling me to go to ---, only of course, he did it in minister's lan- guage without any profanity.
 Well, we struck the best town in the world about six o'clock in the evening, and insideof three hours we were broke, We were down in the Bowery about 10 o'clock when up comes a bum that looked-wel, he looked worse than I do now, and I've been hitting side door Pulmans for three days straight. He comes up to us and braces us for cou- pie of pennies to help toward getting a bed for the night We told him that we were hunting the same thing, and we got to talking.
 We pushes wind at each other for few minutes, him sizing us up all the time and finally he tells us to come with him. We goes, and he leads us few blocks, half way through an alley, up three flights of stairs into room crowded with men that we finds cut later is the cream of hobo society. There was one man, a great big buck with lot of his fingers chewed off his left hand, who seemed to be the leader, and our guide goes up to him and they talks us over for about ten minutes,
 Then the big boy, who was Frisco Slim (now doing little turn In the penitentiary), comes up to us, and, af- ter questioning us, lets off a bunch of loose talk about how we can make plenty of money without doing any work if we just followed his instruc- tions. That sounded good to us, so we joins the gang and me, on account of my solemn lookin' flz, gets nicknamed Funeral Jim, which has stuck ever since.
 "The next morning Frisco takes Fat ty Ben, the guy that run away with me, fixes his right arm in a sling, and wraps his head up in some old bloody bandages. Then comes my turn and he fixes me up good and proper. He started to work on my feet, and after having me take off one of my shoes, padded the sole with strips of leather until when l puts it on again I walks like kid that's crippled for life. Then he gets some chemical dope and starts to work on my face and right arm,
 Say, if Frisco had ever had a chance to study art in Paris he'd a made good all sky, for the way he paint ed sores and burns on me was some thing slick. Well, finally he had us fixed up to his satisfaction, and then he sends us out to beg. We goes and when we comes back that night Fatty had eleven dollars and I had fourteen. Frisco took the money, put it with that which the rest had collected, and after taking out his share and a big hunk for the reserve fund, kept to pay fines and get the members out of trouble, di- yided the rest up between the men. My share was something over three dollars
 We stayed with Frisco until the bulls got wise and copped the bunch Frisco got jugged, and those that got off all scattered except Fatty, myself and those three that are with me now We decided to cut out the grating and confine our work to legitimate begging It isn't so dangerous.
 AS it is now, we goes over the coun try seeing all sorts of things, living high and don't have to do any work Of course, now and then we gets pulled off freight and have to spend five ol ten days in the workhouse of some lit. tie town, but that's only when things I T