g in the public
street; and notorious thieves loitering about with intent to commit a
felony. At the present period of the year the country in the
neighbourhood not of the Metropolis alone, but of all large towns, is
filled with offenders of this kind. Indeed, the sturdy tramp renders the
country to a very great extent unsafe for ladies who have ventured to go
about without protection. Ostensibly he is a vendor of combs, or
bootlaces, or buttons, or is in quest of a hop-picking job, or is a
discharged soldier or sailor, or a labourer out of employment. But
whatever may be his pretence, his mode of procedure is more or less the
same. If he can come upon a roadside cottage left in the charge of a
woman, or possibly only of a young girl, he will demand food and money,
and if the demand be not instantly complied with will never hesitate at
violence. Indeed, when we remember how many horrible outrages have
within the last few years been committed by ruffians of this kind, it is
quite easy to understand the severity necessary in less civilised times.
Only recently the Spaniard Garcia murdered an entire family in Wales; and
some few years ago, at Denham, near Uxbridge, a small household was
butchered for the sake of a few shillings and such little plunder as the
humble cottage afforded. And although grave crimes of this kind are
happily rare, and tend to become rarer, petty violence is far from
uncommon. Many ladies resident in the country can tell how they have
been beset upon the highway by sturdy tramps of forbidding aspect, to
whom, in despair, they have given alms to an amount which practically
made the solicitation an act of brigandage. The farmer's wife and the
bailiff tell us how haystacks are converted into temporary
lodging-houses, chickens stolen, and outbuildings plundered. Only too
often the rogues are in direct league with the worst offenders in London.
Whitechapel supplies a large contingent of the Kentish hop-pickers, and
the 'traveller' who is ostensibly in search of a haymaking or hopping job
is, as often as not, spying out the land, and planning profitable
burglaries to be carried out in winter with the aid of his colleagues.

"There is, no doubt, much about the tramp that is picturesque. A
romantic imagination pictures him as a sort of peripatetic philosopher,
with more of Jacques in him than of Autolycus; living in constant
communion with Nature; sleeping in the open air; subsisting on the
scant