s work
for a boy's wages, went home, and proceeded to sleep the clock around.

Fortunately, I had not stayed by the job long enough to injure
myself--though I was compelled to wear straps on my wrists for a year
afterward. But the effect of this work orgy in which I had indulged was
to sicken me with work. I just wouldn't work. The thought of work was
repulsive. I didn't care if I never settled down. Learning a trade
could go hang. It was a whole lot better to royster and frolic over the
world in the way I had previously done. So I headed out on the
adventure-path again, starting to tramp East by beating my way on the
railroads.

CHAPTER XXI

But behold! As soon as I went out on the adventure-path I met John
Barleycorn again. I moved through a world of strangers, and the act of
drinking together made one acquainted with men and opened the way to
adventures. It might be in a saloon with jingled townsmen, or with a
genial railroad man well lighted up and armed with pocket flasks, or with
a bunch of alki stiffs in a hang-out. Yes; and it might be in a
prohibition state, such as Iowa was in 1894, when I wandered up the main
street of Des Moines and was variously invited by strangers into various
blind pigs--I remember drinking in barber-shops, plumbing establishments,
and furniture stores.

Always it was John Barleycorn. Even a tramp, in those halcyon days,
could get most frequently drunk. I remember, inside the prison at
Buffalo, how some of us got magnificently jingled, and how, on the
streets of Buffalo after our release, another jingle was financed with
pennies begged on the main-drag.

I had no call for alcohol, but when I was with those who drank, I drank
with them. I insisted on travelling or loafing with the livest, keenest
men, and it was just these live, keen ones that did most of the drinking.
They were the more comradely men, the more venturous, the more
individual. Perhaps it was too much temperament that made them turn from
the commonplace and humdrum to find relief in the lying and fantastic
sureties of John Barleycorn. Be that as it may, the men I liked best,
desired most to be with, were invariably to be found in John Barleycorn's
company.

In the course of my tramping over the United States I achieved a new
concept. As a tramp, I was behind the scenes of society--aye, and down
in the cellar. I could watch the machinery work. I saw the wheels of
the social machine go around