The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Road, by Jack London

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Title: The Road

Author: Jack London

Release Date: January 10, 2005 [eBook #14658]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROAD***

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Diane Monico, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (www.pgdp.net)

THE ROAD

by

JACK LONDON

(New York: Macmillan)

1907

TO

JOSIAH FLYNT

The Real Thing, Blowed in the Glass

CONTENTS

CONFESSION

HOLDING HER DOWN

PICTURES

"PINCHED"

THE PEN

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS

BULLS

"Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all,
The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die."

--Sestina of the Tramp-Royal

CONFESSION

There is a woman in the state of Nevada to whom I once lied
continuously, consistently, and shamelessly, for the matter of a
couple of hours. I don't want to apologize to her. Far be it from me.
But I do want to explain. Unfortunately, I do not know her name, much
less her present address. If her eyes should chance upon these lines,
I hope she will write to me.

It was in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1892. Also, it was fair-time,
and the town was filled with petty crooks and tin-horns, to say
nothing of a vast and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry hoboes
that made the town a "hungry" town. They "battered" the back doors of
the homes of the citizens until the back doors became unresponsive.

A hard town for "scoffings," was what the hoboes called it at that
time. I know that I missed many a meal, in spite of the fact that I
could "throw my feet" with the next one when it came to "slamming a
gate" for a "poke-out" or a "set-down," or hitting for a "light piece"
on the street. Why, I was so hard put in that town, one day, that I
gave the porter the slip and invaded