"'When did you get out of jail?' he asks.
"'I have never been in jail.'
"'But you look like a durned skunk who stole a pitchfork from me last
year.'
"'Last year I was in California.'
"'Want to set my barn afire with your old pipe, do you?'
"'I don't smoke.'
"He stands and thinks a moment and then grudgingly tells me to take a
seat on the kitchen doorsteps. The wife brings me out a stingy supper.
There's an abundance on the table and part of it will go to the hogs,
but she cuts me short, thinking to get ahead of me. I have cleared my
plate in ten minutes and then I am set to work and buckle in until too
dark to see longer. My bed is on the hay, and twice during the night
the farmer comes out to see if I haven't stolen the shingles off the
roof. In the morning if I want a meager breakfast I must put in a good
hour's work for it. That means an hour and a half, and when I thank
the farmer for his generosity and get ready to go on, he says:
"'Goin', eh? Well, that's the way with you durned critters. I've
filled you up and lodged you, and now you want to play the sneak on
me.'
"My friend, don't look for much sentiment in humanity these days, and
don't look for a bit of it out in the country. You won't find it. The
farmer can't afford it. He has been beaten by sharpers and squeezed
by trusts until he has lost faith in everyone. He has buttermilk, but
it's for sale, and before selling it to you he wants a certificate
that you have never stolen a haystack or run away with a field of
buckwheat."
It was hard to suspect that the clean-cut, energetic and rapid-fire
talker was a tramp, but when he produced credentials from one end of
the country to the other, and promised and threatened to produce them
from Brazil, Hungary, New Zealand and the Klondike regions to prove
his statement, it had to be credited.
"I'm A No. 1, the well-known hobo, tramp, author and traveler," he
said, in a speed of diction that would have made the late lamented
Pete Daily or Junie McCree green with envy. "Everywhere you've seen
the marks 'A. No. 1,' on railroad fences, in railroad yards, or
anywhere else, and you must have seen them if you've been over this
country much; you'll know I've been there."