Coming along the street, after parting from the maiden ladies, I
gathered in a newspaper from the doorway of some late-riser, and in a
grassy park lay down to get in touch with the last twenty-four hours
of the world. There, in the park, I met a fellow-hobo who told me his
life-story and who wrestled with me to join the United States Army. He
had given in to the recruiting officer and was just about to join, and
he couldn't see why I shouldn't join with him. He had been a member of
Coxey's Army in the march to Washington several months before, and
that seemed to have given him a taste for army life. I, too, was a
veteran, for had I not been a private in Company L of the Second
Division of Kelly's Industrial Army?--said Company L being commonly
known as the "Nevada push." But my army experience had had the
opposite effect on me; so I left that hobo to go his way to the dogs
of war, while I "threw my feet" for dinner.

This duty performed, I started to walk across the bridge over the
Susquehanna to the west shore. I forget the name of the railroad that
ran down that side, but while lying in the grass in the morning the
idea had come to me to go to Baltimore; so to Baltimore I was going on
that railroad, whatever its name was. It was a warm afternoon, and
part way across the bridge I came to a lot of fellows who were in
swimming off one of the piers. Off went my clothes and in went I. The
water was fine; but when I came out and dressed, I found I had been
robbed. Some one had gone through my clothes. Now I leave it to you if
being robbed isn't in itself adventure enough for one day. I have
known men who have been robbed and who have talked all the rest of
their lives about it. True, the thief that went through my clothes
didn't get much--some thirty or forty cents in nickels and pennies,
and my tobacco and cigarette papers; but it was all I had, which is
more than most men can be robbed of, for they have something left at
home, while I had no home. It was a pretty tough gang in swimming
there. I sized up, and knew better than to squeal. So I begged "the
makings," and I could have sworn it was one of my own papers I rolled
the tobacco in.

Then on across the bridge I hiked to the west shore. Here ran the
railroad I was after. No station was in sight. How to catch a freight
without walking to a station was the problem. I noticed that the track
came up a steep grade, culminating at the point where I had tapped it,
and I