W

HEN I made my first entry into New York as a hobo my companion was a weasel-faced road kid whom I had encountered by chance near Poughkeepsie. I had lost Frisco, my regular sidekick, when detectives a few hours before had given us a desperate chase in the railroad yards at Albany. The road kid, however, turned out to be a congenial temporary substitute for Frisco. Sometime during the night our train halted at a milk-station at 125th Street, New York, and the road kid led me to Mount Morris Park, not far distant, where we curled up on benches and fell asleep. I woke with a start at daybreak, for a big harnessbull was beating a tattoo with his billy on the soles of my feet. The road kid had vanished.

The cop restored my equanimity by explaining half apologetically, half humorously, that the most seductive targets conceivable for a policeman's night-stick are the guileless, unsuspecting flat-soled feet of a sleeping bum. At the time I felt so relieved that I was not being pinched for vagrancy that I forgot all about my stinging feet. I soon discovered that New York harness-bulls pay little attention to bums.

When I told the cop I was seeking the main post-office, he directed me

how to get there; he even accompanied me to the New York Central Station at 125th Street, where he explained how, by rushing up the exit stairs as the passengers were flocking down, I could elude the ticket-seller and beat my way to the Grand Central Station. I followed his instructions, and the trick worked nicely. From Fortysecond Street to City Hall Park was a tiresome hike, but I made it long before noon.

In front of the World Building I found a stamp-book containing twenty two-cent stamps. This find cheered me immensely. I sat upon a park bench enjoying the thought of myself as a superior vagabond, a scholarGipsy gazing upon the ostentatious frumperies of the world parading before my sardonic eyes. Had I been unfortified by the potential food which the stamps represented, I am sure I should have been very much depressed and, I fancy, a little scared.

At noon I went to the post-office, but my regular partner did not appear; I had counted, of course, on his arriving in New York ahead of me. Our emergency reunion plan, which had functioned beautifully in Buffalo, seemed to have slipped a cog. Perhaps Frisco had been ditched from his train, or-dark thought-maybe the

"I don't use 'em loose," he said; "too busy to lick 'em. I buy me envelops with stamps already on 'em."

"But you may run out some day," I urged, “and these would come in handy."

"Nope," he blustered, puffing up his cheeks with an air of finality. "Too busy to lick 'em. They ain't worth a spoonful of gravy to me."

I tried another place. Same result. Finally, after several more unsuccessful attempts, I returned to Broadway and, stopping a well dressed pedes trian, I persuaded him to accept five of the stamps in exchange for a dime. With a dime I fed hugely at Beefsteak John's, where, in those days, a full meal consisting of soup, meat, vegetables, dessert, and coffee could be purchased for ten cents, and where the diners polished their plates with an unflagging fanfare of cutlery.

That afternoon I visited the aquarium, and then, after inspecting the tombstones in Trinity Church-yard, I returned to the post-office, where I lounged about, hoping that six o'clock would bring Frisco. Again I was disappointed. Toward nightfall I contrived to sell five more stamps; again I fed amid the deafening rattle of crockery at Beefsteak John's. Thence I trudged to the Battery, where hundreds of bums slumped about upon the benches or wallowed upon the bilious

"Got the tumblin's and a blanket on ye?" he inquired, twisting his fingers in deft pantomime of rolling a cigarette. I supplied him with tobacco and papers. He made his cigarette and licked it into shape with such a copious application of saliva that I doubted if he would ever be able to light it. He succeeded, however, after many attempts, and the fire of it smoldered dully in the dusk like a damp miasmic emanation of his personality.

Presently he slouched off, and I watched him pass from bench to bench gathering up old newspapers. This aroused my curiosity. I followed him. After he had collected a fat arm-load of the papers, he deposited them on the grass, and, lying down beside them, he folded and tucked them one by one about his body; this done, he tossed his coat over his head. Evidently he was all set now for a night's repose.

These preparations struck me as pretty sensible, since the wind from the ocean would probably feel uncomfortably chilly as the hours drew on toward dawn. dawn. Newspapers ought to help a lot. So, following the example of the mildewed hobo, I too began to salvage old newspapers and at last tucked myself in for the night.

I woke early not long after daybreak just in time to witness the beginning of a quaint performance, which became a very familiar one to me in the days that followed. Two policemen entered the upper end of the common, twirling their billies. Their business,

it soon became apparent, was to arouse the sleeping bums to the tonic beauty of the morning landscape. They started in leisurely, but systematically. The sward echoed with the spanking staccato of hot-foot. Usually a single brisk rat-tat-tat on the soles of the feet suffices to wake the normal sleeper; but woe be unto the obstinate snoozer who, oblivious of this preliminary tattoo, snores phlegmatically on! He gets his with trimmings. A cop posts himself at each of his feet, and then they cut loose simultaneously, with such a rousing and stinging bastinado that the force of it fairly jerks the poor fuddled wretch to a sitting posture, shrieking with surprise and anguish.

There were literally several acres of sprawling bums through which the cops reaped their way, whistling blithely as they reaped. I remained where I was as they drew near, for the various reactions to hot-foot amused me not a little. The sudden impact of the billy is always disconcerting; and, delivered upon the thin-scuffed sole of a hobo brogan, it never fails to tingle. I saw several men leap to their feet and limp sullenly away, only to return and gather up their newspapers; for the cops demand that all park lodgers carry away their bedding to the nearest refuse-can. One fellow who slept One fellow who slept not far from me responded to the crack of the billy by waddling off on all fours, and then, pausing, hunched his back, yawned, and shook each foot vigorously and solemnly before standing erect. Most of the bums, however, merely sat up and stared about with a comical expression of stupid bewilderment and pain. Nobody wanted to get up. But the billy was relent

less.

82

At noon that day I was vastly relieved to find my friend Frisco waiting for me at the post-office. He explained that he had been ditched and delayed somewhere up the line between Poughkeepsie and New York. After I had related my adventures, such as they were, we set out for upper Broadway. This thoroughfare in the neighborhood of Forty-second Street, according to Frisco, was excellent for "stemming." Stemming, or going on the stem, is hobo for panhandling. Frisco was hungry, and as the stampbook, now sadly depleted, contained but five stamps, it was clear that something had to be done.

When we reached Herald Square, Frisco immediately began operations. I crossed the street and, standing on the curb, watched him work the crowds. His first prospect was a very tall man with a brief-case under his arm. Frisco did n't stop him, but, instead, fell into step beside him. The man ignored Frisco, apparently, and quickened his pace. Faster and faster he went, taking prodigious strides, so that Frisco was almost forced into a trot to keep up with him. All the while I could see Frisco's jaw wagging at high pressure. Suddenly the tall one threw out another kink in his legs and outdistanced his obstinate pursuer with the ease of a jack-rabbit ambling away from a wheezing dachshund. Frisco paused a few moments to catch his breath, then darted into the throng and fastened himself upon another victim who was going in the opposite direction from that taken by the first. Again the comedy of the accelerated pace and the frenzied wagging of Frisco's jaw. Whether he wagged it

to good purpose or not I don't know, for he was soon lost in the crowd. Presently he reappeared, this time at the haunch of a perspiring fat man, who strove manfully to escape. And on the face of that hunted fat man was an expression, not of indignation or disdain, but of positive guilt. He was really ashamed thus to exhibit his lack of magnanimity to the tattered wayfarer whose voice was gabbling at his ear. He looked more and more uncomfortable. He was weakening fast. In a trice he had succumbed. His hand went to his pocket, and I saw Frisco depart with an air of satisfaction.

Back and forth, back and forth oscillated the figure of Frisco. He panhandled like a man whose very life depended on getting a specific sum in a limited time. After half an hour he rejoined me and exhibited forty-five cents. "That's the way to clean up," he cackled with satisfaction. "You gotta walk fast, keep close to 'em, and talk like hell right in their ear. If you can get 'em listenin' to you, they're gone."

Just for fun I asked him if he received anything from the tall man.

"You mean that first guy? Naw. Say, when they 're so damned high in the air that you have to strain yer eyes to see the dandruff on their coat-collar, well, a fella better let 'em alone, that's all. Come on, let 's mooch down to Beefsteak John's and strap on the old feed-bags. I'm so hungry I could eat a rat-steak smothered with creamed cockroaches."

When we arrived at Beefsteak John's, the place was filled with a noisy gang of longshoremen. We found one table with two empty chairs. A little hook-nosed man clad in a dirty

sweater regarded us with keen eyes from across the table.

"These chairs are n't taken, are they?" I queried, impelled somehow by the fellow's sharp scrutiny to say something.

"Well," he said, "it don't look like it. They're right there in front of yer nose. They ain't nobody in 'em. Take one of 'em. Yer welcome as a lousy mattress. Take two of 'em. Take all you want."

I was just on the point of telling him to go to hell, but I saw his eyes twinkling; so I grinned and sat down. A waiter slithered past, his arm stacked with greasy crockery.

"Say, Wilbur," barked the hooknosed man, "bring me three fried eggs when you get time. One of 'em must be good."

Our messmate at the table was a stevedore who had been a sailor, and he and Frisco were soon deep in fraternal chat. About all the conversation I remember was the stevedore's remark that the Julia Luckenback was in dock over in Brooklyn and that she was short of hands. This talk with the stevedore filled Frisco's mind with images of the sea and of foreign lands; after we had left the restaurant, he talked of nothing but the desirability of shipping out somewhere. I was not unfriendly to the suggestion, though it gave me no ecstatic thrill. But to Frisco there was nothing like the sea. He had shipped out before on the Pacific Coast for at least three voyages, first as cabin-boy, then as able seaman. Although he had n't been at sea for two years, he still carried what he called a book or folder containing certified discharges from merchant vessels. He had talked a good deal, while we were hoboing on the Lake Shore, of

how fine it would be to go to sea again, and of how limited my education was without a sea trip. I acquiesced rather nebulously without thinking of the matter over much. To me New York was a city of marvels, interesting for its own sake. But to Frisco, I was beginning to find out, it was merely a port.

The hook-nosed stevedore accompanied us about the docks for a while and, after buying us a glass of beer, left us with the old classic injunction not to put any beans in our noses.

That night we slept in the Battery, planning next day to make the rounds of the shipping agencies to try for a berth in some ocean-going craft or even on some coasting-vessel, if nothing else turned up.

When the morrow came we made a bee-line for the shipping agencies. All day we toured them. There was nothing doing; that is, for me there was nothing. Frisco's book gave him a certain standing, but my proffered services were not regarded with any particular favor. In some quarters they came to be regarded with open hostility. The fat official in charge of Quail's Agency, annoyed at my nagging persistency during three days, finally ordered me to get out and stay out. I had in desperation represented myself as a coal-passer, thinking that such an undesirable job surely had few applicants, and that because of this I might be taken. Fortunately for me, perhaps, the market was glutted with coal-passers.

Frisco turned down several chances to ship because nothing could be procured for me on the same boat. For four days we kept at it. The outlook was disheartening. Every night we kipped in the Battery, and either bat

trudged over to Brooklyn, across the Brooklyn Bridge, and found where she was docked. The upshot of it was that Frisco was offered a job, while I, as usual, was rejected as inexperienced. Frisco was upon the point of refusing the offer, but, after much argument, I prevailed upon him to take it. I told him I meant to beat it over to Boston and back and then go West. I knew how desperately Frisco was longing for the sea, and I did n't want him to feel that he was responsible for me. Anyway, I was sure I could go it alone from now on. Finally, after wishing each other the best of luck, we parted.

Returning to Manhattan, I left the lower end of the island, which had become obnoxious to me, and walked up town. So far I had seen very little of the city, since during my brief stay I had been held almost exclusively to the docks. It was about 10 A.M. on a Saturday that I left Frisco. A long hike brought me to the Metropolitan Museum, where I strolled about the galleries studying the pictures till my eyes began to smart. I went outside on the museum steps and stood there for some time, smoking, and watching the people parade by. Presently a