reight had not yet started. A "con"
(conductor) was poking his head inside the door.

"Get out of that, you blankety-blank-blank!" he roared at me.

I got, and outside I watched him go down the line inspecting every car
in the train. When he got out of sight I thought to myself that he
would never think I'd have the nerve to climb back into the very car
out of which he had fired me. So back I climbed and lay down again.

Now that con's mental processes must have been paralleling, mine, for
he reasoned that it was the very thing I would do. For back he came
and fired me out.

Now, surely, I reasoned, he will never dream that I'd do it a third
time. Back I went, into the very same car. But I decided to make sure.
Only one side-door could be opened. The other side-door was nailed up.
Beginning at the top of the coal, I dug a hole alongside of that door
and lay down in it. I heard the other door open. The con climbed up
and looked in over the top of the coal. He couldn't see me. He called
to me to get out. I tried to fool him by remaining quiet. But when he
began tossing chunks of coal into the hole on top of me, I gave up and
for the third time was fired out. Also, he informed me in warm terms
of what would happen to me if he caught me in there again.

I changed my tactics. When a man is paralleling your mental processes,
ditch him. Abruptly break off your line of reasoning, and go off on a
new line. This I did. I hid between some cars on an adjacent
side-track, and watched. Sure enough, that con came back again to the
car. He opened the door, he climbed up, he called, he threw coal into
the hole I had made. He even crawled over the coal and looked into the
hole. That satisfied him. Five minutes later the freight was pulling
out, and he was not in sight. I ran alongside the car, pulled the door
open, and climbed in. He never looked for me again, and I rode that
coal-car precisely one thousand and twenty-two miles, sleeping most of
the time and getting out at divisions (where the freights always stop
for an hour or so) to beg my food. And at the end of the thousand and
twenty-two miles I lost that car through a happy incident. I got a
"set-down," and the tramp doesn't live who won't miss a train for a
set-down any time.

PICTURES

"What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all?"

--Sestina of the Tramp-Royal

Perhaps the greatest charm of tram