but he will not even exert himself to steal, unless the article is placed very handy. He lives for the pure sake of living, and therefore is, in the truest sense of the word, the only human being without a single responsibility, motive, care, obligation, or sensibility. In fact I can only compare him to the domestic cat who has every desire gratified by her indulgent owner. The tramp is a general pet of society who has been smoothed by indulgence down to mere goodnatured easy animalism. He is truly

a lily of the field, who neither toils nor spins and yet is amply provided for.

He quarrels sometimes when in drink, but not often, and his rages are extremely short-lived. Having no domestic ties, nor household gods, he has no jealousies. He may form a union for a few days, or months, with a tramp of the opposite sex, and be for the time a step-father to the half-naked progeny who are trooping about with her; but, as both their tastes are erratic, some day they will take different roads without a thought of regret, and no more affecting leavetaking than a parting glass to friendship. They will meet again, with other ties formed, or if it suits their fancies, contract another short partnership together. Their consciences are the easiest, their hearts the lightest, and their memories the shortest for either benefits or wrongs received.

Summer-time is the pleasantest season of the year for the tramp, but the winter months are the most profitable; therefore I think, on the whole, that he does not mind sacrificing the pleasures of green woods, and warm suns, for the more solid advantages of icy blasts, slushy roads, and driving snow.

When a man is cold and drenched he is all the readier to sympathise with the tramp who may be in the

same wretched condition. A really miserable day is the harvest-time of the tattered and shivering vagrant; of course, although he may appear ten times more affected by the piercing blast in his rents and rags than you are in your overcoat, he is not so in reality. Like the savage, he has become inured by a lifetime of exposure to the different seasons, and carries beneath those scanty looking rags a hide as hardened as a rhinoceros. What is making you, in your warm coat, shiver to the marrow, is only bracing up this sturdy rogue and sharpening his appetite for the Irish stew, or steak and onions, which he knows will be waiting for him at the end of his exceedingly short day's journey.

Spring with its east winds and depressing damp, late autumn with its howling blasts and savage downpours, winter with its ice and snows have all their comforting aspects to these charity provokers. The different seasons mean only a very gentle stroll, a few shivers and abject moans and a cosy evening at the first village inn devoted to the service of his kind.

And it is during the evening that our adventurer is seen at his best, when he has reached his caravansary and, throwing aside all hypocrisy, he gives his donation to the general fund and prepares for a boisterous night of freedom and festivity.

Little beer-shops by the side of the road these inns are, with such names as THE BEGGAR'S OPERA, or Noah's ARK, THE SAILOR'S REST, LUCKY HORSESHOE, and so forth. Quiet places, as to the frontage, with a small bar and a dingy parlour beside it, where the landlord sedately attends to stray customers; while to the rear, through a long passage, are the tramp's quarters, large kitchens which serve to cook and dine in, with sleepingdens leading from them.

The landlord has generally a small closet to the rear of the parlour, with a little counter and ticket-like box made into the wall of the kitchen. Here he can receive orders, and watch that his guests do not make too much disturbance to call down the remonstrance of the police, which might place his licence in danger. Inside these bar-closets I have spent many interesting hours, getting my experience of the queer customers on the other side, when it was not always convenient to join in the festivities.

Irish-stew, ham and eggs, steak and onions, and chops mostly occupy the early part of the evening. The fire is always kept blazing merrily, and the cook busy with her pots, frying-pans, and gridirons, for the customers drop in from sundown to nine or ten o'clock at night, after which hour no legitimate tramp would be on the road. Whoever comes in later must be some poor paltry searcher after base toil, who is glad of the leavings which these prosperous sons and daughters of charity discard. I must say for them that they are extravagant and lavish in their donations when they have been lucky themselves. What they have gleaned during the day they spend conscientiously before bedtime, leaving the next day to provide for itself.

They are not epicurean in their eating. A jolly gorge is what they come here for, and they sit down to enormous dishes, devouring as much as they can, until they are purple in the face with repletion. Then they contemptuously pass over the remainder of the feast to the poor wretches who crawl in late. objects, who really

Those despised Those despised want work, are too proud to beg, yet must play the hungry dogs to these robust cadgers, and eat humble pie for their futile attempts to be honest.

A merry night succeeds the supper.

Pipes are set alight and drinks ordered. It might be supposed that as this is a beer-shop, ale and beer would be the order, but with the exception of a few pots by way of what Mr. Swiveller would call modest quenchers, the true tramp, if in funds, despises this poor tipple. Bottles of brandy, gin, rum, and whiskey, are brought from the spirit shops and consumed copiously. The ladies and street-singers take port wine by the pint. One evening I saw three blind men empty six flagons of wine at a sitting, winding up with a bottle of brandy by way of a night-cap.

Singing, swearing, dancing, and courting fill up the intervals, in the delicate manner that might be supposed from the refined company, so that by the time the worthy landlord has shut up his front bar, the revellers are in a high state of conviviality.

Tramps do not possess any fixed property, neither do they hold on to anything transferable very long, but sometimes I have met them in company with a dog.

Now dogs are the most imitative of animals, as well as the most reflective. The hour they make up their canine minds to accept a biped as their leader, they begin to mould their personalities into the likeness of that biped. A cat will retain her individuality to the last gasp of her ninth life, but a dog allows himself to be absorbed into the personality of the being he decides to follow, and he quickly becomes a feasible replica of his master.

The tramp's dog is an animal apart from all other dogs, as the master is, different from all other castes of mankind. He is a mongrel, as might be supposed, and has the blending, with the other qualities, of a hundred different breeds in him. He is about the size of a fox-terrier, with a shaggy coat, dirty white and rusty black in

colour, a long solemn snout, small crafty eyes, enormously thick legs, and an attenuated barrel. His tail hangs limply down, or, if it curls at all, takes an inward curve between the hind legs, which generally have a backward and a downward tendency, that shrinking appearance which the hind legs of dogs are apt to take when the master has tied a rope to their collar, after openly expressing his intention of drowning his faithful follower. Cruikshank has drawn the animal to the life in one of his illustrations to OLIVER TWIST.

The ribs of the tramp's dog protrude, because he does not fare so well as his master. His rough coat hangs also in ragged patches, not with distemper (because it requires breed in a dog to take the distemper), but with frequent and violent scratchings which are his only pastime. He could not be a tramp's dog, if he did not imitate, to the best of his ability, his master's rags and other peculiarities.

It can easily be understood that a dog who wears no collar, and who knows that no taxes are paid for him, has not much cause for pride. A dog that must pass through parts of the country where police regulations are sometimes very stringent has to be on his mettle and keep a wary eye about him for casualties. He is perfectly well aware that his leader cannot, and will not, take his part, or even own him, if he gets into any trouble with the authorities. He cannot afford the luxury of a free fight with any of the dogs he may meet, for that would call too much public attention to his master, a state of affairs that he tries in every way to avoid, for his own sake and for the sake of the object that he follows. His main aim, therefore, is to sneak through life as unostentatiously as possible and avoid anything in the way of publicity.

No. 535.-VOL. XC.

He knows perfectly well that when he comes to a crowded part of the road, or where houses are, he must skulk behind and appear as if he were an objectless and ownerless dog. He must wag his tail to every one he meets and fawn upon them as if he was on the look-out for a master. He must give a wide circuit to all villages and towns where policemen are likely to be, and in general obliterate his individuality, as well as his similitude, on every possible occasion, if he intends to continue in the land of the living, which like his master, he wants very earnestly to do. Therefore the stranger does not often see the tramp and his dog together. The dog is never to be met inside the cadger's inn, nor even within its vicinity. On a lonely part of the road you may chance upon the pair together, but the dog will sneak out of sight, and take refuge in the adjoining field the moment the stranger, and possible victim, appears in sight.

As a mongrel, he is accustomed, like his master, to all sorts of weather. During the day he follows at a respectful distance, prepared to make himself scarce at a moment's notice. Like the Australian dingo, he has lost his bark, and when his master comes in sight of the night's refuge, he sneaks away to some hedge, where he can keep his eye on the place and wait patiently for his master's reappearance next day. He then takes a circuit of some fields in order to avoid the houses, and rejoins the wanderer on the other side of civilisation.

His master never thinks about him, nor considers his wants in the slightest. What he can pick up in the shape of old bones, or dig up from the buried treasures of other dogs, constitutes his food. His scent is keen for such finds and he is

D

generally fairly successful, at least he manages to keep the soul within those bulging ribs, and that is enough for his desires. Covered with fleas, he has more occupation than his master, because he bothers himself to a greater extent over these invaders. Sometimes he is caught and shot, or drowned, or stoned to death, but he takes all this as the chances of war. Sometimes you may find him in a snow-drift trying his hardest to keep life and warmth in the little body of a tramp's abandoned brat, or lying frozen and stiff upon it; for not being human, he will take responsibilities upon himself, in spite of his nomadic training.

It

Before a nation is civilised, children are a source of wealth to the parents. When we are bound down by the obligations of civilisation they become a decided burden to a poor man. is not the fault of the children that they seem like curses instead of boons when they arrive. It is the entire fault of an exacting civilisation. Why cannot we be like the savages of New Guinea, the free and easy parents of the Solomon Islands, or those extremely indigent poor who carelessly pitch the entire responsibility on the shoulders of the ratepayers } Better still, why not be like the regular tramp which is the nearest approach to those sons and daughters of Nature, the savages, welcome our progeny with careless merriment, and leave the providing of them to the casual passer-by?

The male tramp is absolutely devoid of any responsibility or care for his nameless children. He is much more careless than the savage papa, yet he is quite ready to take up any family for the time, no matter how numerous, and enjoy himself with the results of their mendicant gleanings. He is the easiest father with these hardy young savages, and they

have the jolliest life imaginable while with these parents. The boys and girls have no reason to dread the waking up in the morning, with stern parental orders about clean necks and hands, and a board-school nightmare to haunt their innocent slumbers through the night. They may lie down like the puppy-dogs and get up next morning with a yawn, a scratch, and a shake, and with no one to make a single reflection about their private habits. Society must cover their nakedness, so that they, with their parents leave that task to society. They have nothing whatever to do with either births, deaths, or habiliments; society manages all that for them. What they alone have to consider is how best to satisfy the vacuum which Nature creates in their internals, and that is easily done with the gifts which they have inherited from a long and varied line of accomplished sires.

To the like of us unfortunate payers of rents and taxes the coming of a baby is a very sorrowful subject for contemplation. The doctor, Mrs. Gamp, long robes and christening parties, vaccination, measles and the rest, -a thousand and one cares troop in the footsteps of that minute stranger from mystery-land. But, to the happy tramp these are considerations and miseries unknown.

Like the savage, he leaves his female at the first Union, when she can no longer keep up with him. There he expects her and her brood to be looked after by the authorities appointed by appointed by a charitable country for that purpose. He goes on his

way cheerful and contented with his lot, and probably wipes her and them, with other present troubles, entirely out of his mercurial mind. The female is just as careless about her present and future. She is young and healthy as a savage, and most

likely a great many degrees more shameless. Beside her run five or six sturdy young half-naked savages. At the last moment she drops into the Union Hospital, adds another to the superabundant population of paupers, and so soon as she is strong enough goes on her way rejoicing, all the richer by another beggar, the possession of which no one is likely to contest with her.

There is one singular point about these tramps, both male and female. They are mostly light-haired, blueeyed, and ruddy in colour. When you can get past the dust and dirt to the original colour, the females are not as a rule beautiful, but they are generally robust, brick-tinted, and healthy. They do not need to carry or nurse their offspring very long; at six or eight months the beggar's brat is generally trying its own legs and using its own gums on a crust. While the mother is carrying it, she is almost sure to reap a rich harvest of pity, with its equivalents, so that a nursing tramp has no need to go a-begging for a new husband.

She may take her own pick, for she is as good as a well-jointured widow to the fellow who can get her to link her fortune with his.

A large family is also a decided advantage to the mother who can parade them in their rags and stepand-stair stages. She can go from door to door with the best of prospects, and tell her story about a sick father out of work with splendid effect.

One day I asked a female who had come, with her filled quiver, to appeal to my benevolence, what ailed her husband. With an upward cast of her roguish blue eyes she answered, "That's what we all want to know." "Where is he?" I next asked, which evidently took her unawares for she gave me the same reply, and to my next question of

"What is he?" she burst out laughing as she brought her glance to bear full on me, while she replied mendaciously: "Ah, sir, you want to know a great deal more than I know myself."

In my capacity as an artist, I regard these nomads with great affection and would not want them out of the landscape for a great deal. They are always ready and willing to pose as models, and never hurry me in my work, while being free and natural in their actions, they invariably strike picturesque attitudes. While I sketch them they open their hearts without stint, regarding me, I suppose, as a kind of fellow craftsman who imposes on society, as they do with their fictions. tell me their adventures and what luck they have had lately, thus helping me with the incidents needful to an author; also in many cases they put me up to the most likely houses to appeal to, and what houses I should avoid as of no use.

They

"So and so's dog is all bark, you may go safely past him, but look out for the next place, its a vicious brute and likely to plant its teeth in you without a warning."

"How old is this little chap?"

"The Lord knows, for I don't; you'll be asking me next, who's his dad," replies my model with a merry laugh; "all I know or care about is that he is the best kid in the world for drawing a tanner out of old ladies. They all pities him when he tackles 'em."

"Have you seen my mother passing this way?" asked a young mendicant about six, as I was sitting painting one day by a roadside.

"What is she like?" I enquired in turn.

"She's a long, skinny, yellow-faced woman with a broken nose and a torn-down-eye."