CHAPTER I.
THE PRODIGAL AND THE WAGER.
"Wasson, what is atramp?"
"Dunno."
"Cleveland, what is atramp?"
No answer.
"Wasson, accommodate me, if you please, by introducing the extremity of your boot to Mr. Cleveland."
"Ouch! What in thunder are you kicking me for, Wasson?"
"I'm not kicking you; extremes meet, my boy, and there was a natural repulsion. Hough wants to know what a tramp is!"
"How do I know! Ah! here comes Smythe; he will tell you."
"Ah, Smythe, my boy, just in time! Wasson don't know any thing, and Cleveland won't tell what he does know; what's a tramp? There now—that's a good fellow—don't open your mouth so; you'll injure your neck,—just tell me all you know about them."
"What's a which? Tramp!"
"Don't be a poll parrot, Smythe. Tell me what they are. You've been to college and learned to row, and box, and play base ball, and ought to know nearly every thing. Here I am continually reading about them. Every paper you pick up is full of them. Tramp,tramp, TRAMP, from one end of the paper to the other. There is not a chicken purloined off a roost; a man killed; a house fired; a train ditched; virtue outraged, vice embellished, or deviltry of any kind perpetrated, but this omnipresent scape-goat of the nineteenth century appears to be at the bottom of it all. Now I want to know what a tramp is."
"I am sorry that I cannot enlighten you, Hough, but—"
"But," exclaimed Wasson, interrupting Smythe, "if I am not very much mistaken, here comes a gentleman who can!" And as the lawn gate swung to its place, with a clang of the latch, there appeared walking up the gravelled walk, a being, whose every square inch of superficial surface indicated abona fide, unadulterated specimen of the genus vagabond.
A frock coat,—guiltless of buttons, (save the two in the rear, where they were of no earthly use)—with half a frock gone, and the remainder of the garment mottled like unto the celebrated garment that got Joseph in a hole, was fastened at the neck with a glittering horse-shoe nail. A pair of pants, fantastically fringed with ragged ends about their extremities, higher up bore the brands of many a camp-fire. Their original color had long since struck to the over-powering allied forces of wind and weather, mud and grease. In a landscape they might have looked a subdued maroon, etched with lampblack. Below the fantastic fringe work appeared a pair of feet encased in a boot and a shoe. The shoe had evidently seen better days, and seemed to shrink with humiliated pride from the forced companionship of the boot, which was a plebeian of the Stogie family. The shoe was long, narrow and pointed. The boot was coarse, thick and stubby. The toe of the boot had an air-hole in it, extending clean across the upper. The shoe was intact, and had a brass buckle the size of a door plate, which give it an air of fallen greatness. But the boot was in proud possession of a heel, while the shoe had none, equalizing matters. In glaring contrast to this tatterdemalion attire, the hat, that completed the picture, was a new straw affair, and looked like a bright, fresh, shingle roof, clapped on a very dilapidated, old building. The face beneath the hat was round and plump, very dirty, quite keen, frescoed with tobacco-juice and embossed with a short, stumpy beard. As the figure drew nigh the group on the lawn, boot, shoe, pants, coat and face seemed to blend into an animated object, while the bran new hat kept calling out, like a side-show man on a fair ground, "Here we are! Now you have us! An epitome of Hard Times! A parody on financial acumen! A caricature on the fat of the land! What aint rags is dirt, and what aint dirt is bugs! We're the remnant of other days! We're the breaking-up-of-a-hard-winter! We're a pariah, a scavenger, an outcast! That's what we are, and we want you to know it. Here's your prodigal for you! Kill your fatted calf of kitchen fag-ends and serve up the banquet on the back door step. Bring out the purple and fine linen of your ragbags. Here's your prodigal, and he's come back hungry!"
But though the hat said this, as plain as a hat could, the figure beneath the hat spoke quite differently. Having, with a faltering step and a pronounced limp in the shoe foot, approached the four gentlemen who were enjoying their after dinner cigars on the lawn, the figure with a keen, swift glance took an inventory of each person before him, and then pulling off the new hat—to the great joy of a lot of hair that appeared relieved from the constraints of good society—it said, in a mumbling voice:
"Gentlemen, this is the saddest moment of my life. I am no professional beggar, but the victim of misfortunes, and reduced from comfort to my present state of want by calamities over which I had no control. If you could give me some assistance it would be a great blessing to me, and a noble act for you; for I have not had a bite to eat forfour days, and my clothes would drop off of me with starvation if they were not falling off from raggedness."
"Four days!" exclaimed all.
"Four days," solemnly reasserted the figure.
"And you still live!" said Hough.
"I still live," returned the figure, as solemnly as before, but with a shrewd, covert little glance at Hough accompanying the answer.
Wasson noticed the glance, and laughed. Cleveland looked up and the prodigal greeted him with a benignant smile. Smythe withdrew his hands from their repose in his pockets, and, with open mouth, gazed first at the patrician shoe, then at the plebeian boot, then at the subdued, maroon colored, landscape pants, then at the skirtless coat, and at last fastened his attention on the fascination of the brilliant, galvanized-iron, horse-shoe nail.
"Are—are you a—Tramp?"
"No, Sir!" emphatically and indignantly replied the prodigal.
"Then we're lost!" exclaimed all four, and Hough continued, "Had you been a tramp I'd have given you a dollar."
The prodigal looked surprised—a trifle suspicious. For the first time in his life he found his vagabondage quoted at a premium.
"Gentlemen," he said, "pardon me if my native modesty prompted me to deny the truth. I will confess that, having spent my substance in assisting the miseries of others, I am, through the fault of my own generosity and moral rectitude, at last brought to that sad phase of mortal existence comprehended by the name "tramp." Iama tramp—and I do not say it boastingly—; Heaven forbid!" And with a smile of ineffable sweetness, in which dirt and "native modesty" were harmoniously blended, the prodigal meekly folded his hands and rolled his eyes skywards.
"Found, at last!" exclaimed all.
The incidents of this chapter occurred one sunny August afternoon, on the lawn in front of Smythe's summer cottage on Long Island Sound, not far from the lovely little village of Greenwich.
Smythe's cottage was a pretty little piece of carpenter work in the Swiss chatelet style—so delightfully expensive and romantic.
Algernon Smythe was the son of his father. A clear understanding of this matter is necessary inasmuch as the ancestral Smythes bore the name ofSmith, and the one immediately preceding Algernon hadhis"Smith" decorated with the prefix Josiah. Josiah Smith drifted away from the cobble stones of Connecticut—where theSmithfamily had long been at warfare with the rocks about the possession of a few acres of sterile, sorrel-trodden, ground,—at an early age, and found his way to New York City. With him came the customary solitary shilling. But thisSmithshilling was an inflationist. It swelled itself into houses and lots, and stocks and bonds, and shaved notes and fore-closed mortgages, and fifty per cent. premiums on seven per cent. loans, and kept itself so busily employed that when Josiah Smith retired from active life and took up a permanent residence in Greenwood, his only son and heir found himself sole master of a million of money. This was too much wealth to be comfortably worn by the name of Smith. Why, Algernon could remember when he was a little fellow, sanding sugar and dusting spices in his father's store, familiar little boys,—who were manœuvering for raisins,—used to affectionately call him "Smiffy!"
As a consequence when Algernon returned from Paris (Pahreehe called it) he no longer intruded the private "i" into the public eye, but put a "y" in place of it. Then, that his name might be parted in the middle,—to match his hair,—he tapered off the "i"-less creation with an "e"; adopted a coat of arms; selected a motto; wanted to know if Connecticut was not somewhere in Massachusetts "you know"; always saidbrava!at the opera; and bought him a yacht!
Of the other guests at the cottage; Mr. Hough was the relative appendage of a City Savings Bank. He drew $3,500 per annum from the bank and several thousand from other sources. Mr. Wasson was generally supposed to be an artist. He was always going to have a picture finished for the next exhibition. "A thing that Church or Bierstadt might be proud of." Meanwhile a doting father, who, in a distant Massachusetts town, had first made shoes on his own knees, but now made them on the knees of some five hundred of his fellow men, kindly furnished him with a liberal means of subsistence until his profession was established on a paying basis.
Benjamin Cleveland was a young fellow, but little more than twenty-three. His mother had belonged to an old Boston family.
When Ben was ten years old his widowed mother died leaving him to the tender care of his uncle, with a legacy of twenty thousand dollars. By means of this inheritance he had obtained liberal educational advantages,—attaining his majority shortly after graduating (without any honors) at Yale. (Bostonians take honors at Harvard.) After leaving college he diligently applied himself to the problem of life. He had determined upon making his mark in the world. Nearly all young men do so determine. The "mark" up to the opening of this narrative was neither a very prominent or promising one. On his twenty-first birth-day his uncle, who neither understood or sympathized with him,—in fact rather disliked him,—paid into Ben's hands $15,450, the remainder of the legacy left by his mother, and bade him "God speed";—a fashion some people have of shifting on to God's shoulders responsibilities that belong on their own. For a couple of years Ben enjoyed himself looking around among his fellow men, and at the age of twenty-three had $10,400 left to his bank account. He was fond of good living, fond of adventure, fond of sport, fond of being his own master, fond of a congenial laziness, and fond of every thing pertaining to good health save hum-drum work, and money-making by the "plod" process. He could lie on his back and build castles in the air all day long. But it is doubtful if he would have undertaken the exertion of going twenty rods to get one of the foundation stones to commence one of his castles with. He was something of adreamer. Not much of adoer. He ignored the past; enjoyed the present; neglected the future.
Several moments elapsed in silence, while the lawn party surveyed therara-avisbefore them. The prodigal was the first to speak. Extending his hand toward Hough, he suggestively remarked, "Where are you, boss?"
"Here is your dollar," replied Hough, presenting him one; "you have earned it, my friend, by your truthfulness. Now, my friend, tell me what a tramp is?"
"Why, a tramp's a tramp," replied the prodigal.
"Concise, if not lucid," remarked Wasson.
"Yes, butwhatare they, who are they, where are they, what do they do and where do they go?" persisted Hough.
The prodigal quietly picked a gravel stone out of the gaping toe of the boot, and answered, "They'retramps; that's what they are. Dead-brokes; bums; beats; codjers; hand-out solicitors; cross-tie sailors; free-lunch fiends; centennial rangers; square-meal crusaders! They're everywhere, they do every thing, and go all over. They're the great American travellers of the nineteenth century. Explorers. Progressionists. Agrarians. I'm one of 'em myself, I am! I'm just from New Orleans, and going to Boston," and the prodigal stopped to request a donation of tobacco.
"But where do they live?" asked Wasson.
"Great Blazes! They live where they eat! What a question!" And the prodigal completely annihilated poor Wasson by rolling his eyes upon him in supreme astonishment.
"Yes, but what do they eat? You know they must eat, or they would not live;" and Smythe felt that he had cornered him.
"True for you sir. Well they eat mostly at different places. When in New York some of them like to stop at the Astor, and others again prefer rooming in the lumber piles and taking their meals at Delmonico's. The Fifth Avenue is good enough for me though;" and he smiled upon Smythe, and Algernon opened his eyes and mouth to their fullest extent.
"Don't you ever work? Do you never care to earn money at labor?" asked Wasson.
"Work! Labor! Me! I'm not used to it, but I don't stand back from it on that account. No sir. I love to work. Do you know of any body that wants a hand to help cut ice, or can strawberries, or take astronomical observations? If you do, tell me, for I'm their man. Work! Iadoreit!" and his face expressed his adoration.
"How long did it take you to come from New Orleans?" asked Hough.
The prodigal studied a moment, and then replied, "I left New Orleans on the 20th of last month. I made St. Louis in eight days and it's taken me two weeks and a trifle more to come from St. Louis here."
"Why, that is over one hundred miles a day! You're a fast walker," said Hough.
"Walk! Who said anything about walking? Not much. I walked when I felt like it, and I rode when I felt like it."
"You had money, then?" asked Wasson.
"Money!" exclaimed he of the maroon pants, disdainfully. "Money! Nary red. What did I want of money. Any fool can travel with money. I beat my way!" and a look of conscious pride illumined his face.
"Came from New Orleans here in three weeks, without any money!" And the magnitude of the undertaking so overwhelmed Mr. Smythe that he viewed the tramp as a second Humboldt.
"Step around to the kitchen and tell them to give you something to eat."
"No, I'm obliged to you, stranger. I just had two squares and three hand-outs, and I couldn't eat another morsel. I'm sorry, but such is the fact," replied the prodigal to the utter neglect of his assertion that for four days he had not tasted food.
When Wasson reminded him of it, he coolly remarked that it was true enough, and arose from his having a terrible toothache that prevented his tasting any thing.
"I must tear myself from you, gentlemen," he continued. "Time is precious, and although I enjoy your society, I must not neglect business. I'm much obliged for the dollar, mister. I'll spend it usefully and judiciously. Ta, ta!" and with a free and easy wave of his hand, the tramp turned and walked jauntily down the gravelled walk without the slightest sign of the limp he entered with.
After his departure Hough broke out in a boisterous fit of hilarity.
"That's atramp!" he exclaimed. "We have seen the elephant, now, gentlemen, what doyouthink of him?"
"What a supreme amount ofchic!" said Smythe, whom, it will be remembered, had been to Paris.
"Grand! Glorious! It's a fortune to him!" replied Hough, feigning to be lost in admiration. And Cleveland said, meditatively,
"Three thousand miles in three weeks without a cent! By Jove!"
But Wasson rejoined that he did not believe a word of it.
"It can't be done," said Smythe, positively. "No man could do it.Icouldn't do it myself!"
"Yes itcanbe done," cried Cleveland, "whetheryoucould do it or not.Icould do it."
"You!"
"Yes,me!"
"I'd be willing to give you three months, and wager that then you could not. You'd starve to death in three days, and commence telegraphing us to come and bring you home before you crossed New Jersey," said Smythe, contemptuously deriding the idea of Cleveland's undertaking the feat.
"Don't be too sure about that, Smythe," retorted Cleveland, warming up. "What man has done, man can do. If that fellow came from New Orleans here in a little over three weeks without a cent, I can go from here to New Orleans in the same time on a like amount of money. I'll wager ten thousand dollars I can do it!" And Mr. Benjamin Cleveland arose to his feet and nodded his head in an aggressive manner, though he had not the remotest idea his challenge would be accepted, and only made the boast to support his assertion. Great then was his surprise—and a surprise not untinctured with consternation, when Smythe quickly replied, "I take the bet. Hough, Wasson, you heard Ben. It's a bargain. When will you start, Cleveland?"
But Ben courageously backed his assertion by quickly replying,
"To-morrow!"
"Pshaw! Cleveland, don't make a fool of yourself," spoke up Wasson. "Even if that fellow did really do as he says he did, remember, he is aprofessional tramp, and you would be but a novice, at best. You will lose your money, sure."
"I'm not urgent about the matter, only I do not like a man to be so positive about a thing he knows nothing of. You can draw the wager if you wish, Ben," said Smythe.
The manner in which he said it, however, nettled Ben, and though he had made his wager thoughtlessly, and without a consideration of the humiliations, privations, and hardships embraced in the proposed feat, he refused to retract.
"No, Smythe ... I don't take water. The bet is made. Let it stand."
There was a peculiar stubbornness in Ben's nature that compelled him after having made a boast to carry it out. Besides, the proposition was attractive from its startling novelty. It was an excitement his nature craved. In the quick communion of his mind the following thoughts resolved themselves into argumentative forces. "I'm a worthless, shiftless, good-for-nothing fellow anyway. I'm not rich enough to support the life I would like to lead, and I know nothing about 'money-making.' I need a good, practical knowledge of the world more than any thing else in it. A good shaking up. How to obtain it I don't know. There are undoubtedly thousands of channels open, but they are hidden from me. I have $10,400. If I lose my wager, I am young and the world is before me. If Iwin, I'll have enough to take me to Europe and see the sights for a couple of years. At all events, there are none interested save myself. I am alone in the world; none dependent on me, I'm dependent on none. Responsible to no one for my acts,—none to console a misfortune—nor to share a triumph. I'll go!"
And go he did.
By the terms of the wager, duly drawn up that evening, Cleveland was to start from the City Hall, in New York City, at six o'clock in the afternoon of the 10th of September, without money or any thing of value on his person. In this condition he was to make his way to St. Louis and from there to New Orleans, at which last named city he was to arrive, (and make known his arrival by a telegram from the St. Charles Hotel,) at, or before ten o'clock, A.M., City Hall time, October the 2d, making the tramp in twenty-one days from New York, with four hoursgraceon the 2d of October, thrown in at the suggestion of Hough. It was further stipulated that at no time while performing the feat, should he appeal for aid to friends, or use the influences of relatives or name, either by reference or application, to assist him. To recapitulate:—Benjamin Cleveland was to make his way from New York to New Orleans, via St. Louis, in three weeks, as a penniless, professional TRAMP!