n
strikes the ties between the rails, rebounds against the bottom of the
car, and again strikes the ties. The shack plays it back and forth,
now to this side, now to the other, lets it out a bit and hauls it in
a bit, giving his weapon opportunity for every variety of impact and
rebound. Every blow of that flying coupling-pin is freighted with
death, and at sixty miles an hour it beats a veritable tattoo of
death. The next day the remains of that tramp are gathered up along
the right of way, and a line in the local paper mentions the unknown
man, undoubtedly a tramp, assumably drunk, who had probably fallen
asleep on the track.

As a characteristic illustration of how a capable hobo can hold her
down, I am minded to give the following experience. I was in Ottawa,
bound west over the Canadian Pacific. Three thousand miles of that
road stretched before me; it was the fall of the year, and I had to
cross Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains. I could expect "crimpy"
weather, and every moment of delay increased the frigid hardships of
the journey. Furthermore, I was disgusted. The distance between
Montreal and Ottawa is one hundred and twenty miles. I ought to know,
for I had just come over it and it had taken me six days. By mistake I
had missed the main line and come over a small "jerk" with only two
locals a day on it. And during these six days I had lived on dry
crusts, and not enough of them, begged from the French peasants.

Furthermore, my disgust had been heightened by the one day I had spent
in Ottawa trying to get an outfit of clothing for my long journey. Let
me put it on record right here that Ottawa, with one exception, is the
hardest town in the United States and Canada to beg clothes in; the
one exception is Washington, D.C. The latter fair city is the limit. I
spent two weeks there trying to beg a pair of shoes, and then had to
go on to Jersey City before I got them.

But to return to Ottawa. At eight sharp in the morning I started out
after clothes. I worked energetically all day. I swear I walked forty
miles. I interviewed the housewives of a thousand homes. I did not
even knock off work for dinner. And at six in the afternoon, after ten
hours of unremitting and depressing toil, I was still shy one shirt,
while the pair of trousers I had managed to acquire was tight and,
moreover, was showing all the signs of an early disintegration.

At six I quit work and headed for the railroad yards, expecting to
pick