Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-12-24


 thieving, assault, and so forth, but did you ever hear of one being arrested for eloping with a married woman? No? Well, that was one of my first adventures. I struck farmhouse one day in Connecticut. and the farmers wife gave me the best dinner I had had in month. She was very inqUis- itive about life on the road, and she gave me to understand that she was not living happily with her husband. He was away from home that day, and before we were through talking she announced that she proposed to flee from home and become a dilapi- dated gentlewoman. Yes. sir, she was going to take to the road and become q tramp, and in my company at that and she was so determined that it scared me. began to argue with her, but she cut me short. She'd either take to the road or jump down the family we'll
 "The only way out of it for me was to promise to walt for her at a cer- tain crossroads three miles away that night She would have given me all her husbands spare clothing and sum of money, but I wouldn't take them. 1 didn wait for her at the crossroads, as agl Hd, but went on for four miles farther and turned in un- der haystack. I routed out at day light just as she came along looking for me. and as we stood there in the road arguing her husband and con stable came along. and we were gath cred in. The husband wanted to kill me on the spot, and the constable promised me a thousand years in state prison. The wife was taken back home by force, and was run into jail and afterward given a sentence of ninety days. They were little doubt ful about the elopement charge, and so they changed it to vagrancy. After five days in the coop found weak spot in the wall and went out, and over twenty other prisoners followed me. l think 1 squared things.
 Resembled Another Man.
 Tn Pennsylvania, once upon time. a motherly woman, the wife of a viii. lage carpenter. opened the kitchen door 10 me and then yelled out Tom" and reeled back into a chair. My name isn't Tom, and it took me ten minutes to solve that puzzle. It appeared that I closely reSembled a certain Tom to whom she was engaged several years before and who mysteriously disap- peared. After waiting a year for him to show up she married the carpenter, but was an unhappy woman. Say, now, that woman must have been aw- fully nearsighted and had something wrong with her ears, or my resem- blance TO her lost Tom must have been something marvellous. It was no use for me to deny that I was Tom. had his look and voice and build, and, hay Ing found me, she did not propose to lot me go again. She was just set on roing on the tramp with me. and when she went into mysteries over it I could think of no other plan but to agree. I was to wait for her at bridge over river five miles away, but I intended to keep walking all night. See what trick luck played me.
 A farmer halted me before l reach ed the bridge and offered me a dollar and q nights lodging to help him kill a fat steer. Next morning the wo- man was picked ur at the bridge where she had waited for hours, and soon thereafter l was a prisoner. admitted nothing and denied nothing She was a woman. you see. They didn't charge me with alienating the wifes affections. but with firing a hayStack six or seven miles away. ] was railroaded to jail for six months kept in chains for twenty days as a desporado. and then went out through a hole in the wall and left a flaming old barrack behind me am no man to go back on q woman. but you see she had eloped by herself and with herself I hadn't anything to do with it. They simply dragged me into the affair by the heels, and it cost