The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-05-14
PRETTY GIRL TURNS HOBO.
Beat Her Way By Freight From St
 Louis to Chicago.

From the New York Sun,
 An 1S-year-old Chicago girl enjoys the distinction of being the first of her sex to make long journey by stealing a ride on a freight train. It is not strictly true to say that she enjoys this distinction. When her experience was over she de- clared emphatically that a life on the rolling freight did not appeal to her.
 "No more hobo life for mel" exclaimed Miss Sarah Hansen, as she crawled out of box car.
 Miss Hansen is a stenographer. Her parents live in Chicago, but she had a job in St. Louis. Thrown out of this by the firms failure, she tried in vain to find another job.
 First her slender savings melted away. Then she pawned her clothing. piece by piece, till she had only one suit left. Her parents were poor, so that she could not appeal to them for help.
 She did appeal to one of the firm for whom she had worked, asking him to lend her the money for a ticket back to chica- go. The reply she received made her de- eide that anything would be better than to trust to appeals for help.
 She was at the end of her resources, when it suddenly occurred to her that she had heard of people travelling without railway tickets, and that what other folks had done Sarah Hansen could do, too.
 On the spur of that inspiration she made for the freight yards of the Chi- cago and Alton Railroad. There she found an embarrassment of riches In the -line of freight trains
 They were scooting up and down and
 t.. fI.A lie concertng manner for it was impossible to this new recruit to the hobo profes- sion to decide in which direction any one train would ultimately decide to depart. An angel in the very unusual disguise of a small boy appeared and told her that No. on the third track was the Chi cago freight. That was welcome infor- nation.
 Slipping away from the small boy angel, Miss Hansen stole along in the shadow of box car half full of tiles. She climbed in and crawled into the corner to await developments.
 These promised to take the unweleome shape of two other hobboes, who were not pretty girls, or even girls at all. One of them had actually climbed into the car and had turned to assist his brother knight of the road when an approach ing brakeman caused them both to take a hurried departure.
 Miss Hansen rode all night on her none too soft bed of tiles. Morning came and hour after hour went by without her be- ing moested At Joliet she crawled to the door for the purpose of spying out the land and discovering her whereabouts.
 Instead of discovering. however, she was herself discovered, for at the door she came face to face with the brake man. It was a tossup which of them was the more disturbed by the encounter.
 When the amazed brakeman managed to demand the why and wherefore of her presence in his car, Miss Hansen burst into tears and told him all about It.
 ''Wellv' said the brakeman, II thought I'd seen every kind O hobo that ever beat A freight train, but you're the first lady hobo that ever come my way!'
 Whereupon. like gentleman and aphil- anthropist. he emptied his pockets of their contents which were 60 cents, and hand ed the amount to Miss Hansen with the advice to complete her journey via the trolley line. The girl took both the money and the advice, got herself the first food she had tasted in twenty-four hours and departed forever. she vowed, from the ranks of the hobos.