THE PULLMAN BOX CAR.
While loafing about the depot, waiting for another Philadelphia train,
a string of empty coal flats and gondolas drew slowly past on another
track. Tom's quick, practical and _professional_ eye immediately
noticed them, and also the brand on the cars telling the road they
belonged to.
"Hurrah!" said he, "we've made a close connection! Come on!" and
in a short time Ben found himself at the bottom of a black, dusty
coal-smeared gondola.
"Bully!" exclaimed Tommy. "Here we are and no one saw us get in, so if
we keep quiet and lay low we are not likely to be disturbed."
This prediction proved correct, for they travelled the remainder of
the night in the gondola without being noticed. The train went slow,
and stopped often, switching frequently, but as they lay at the bottom
of the car and there was no travelling over them by employees, they
were not interfered with. Singularly enough, Ben fell asleep while the
train was in motion, and slept well. The jolting of the gondola became
rather conducive to his slumbers, than otherwise.
In the grey of the dawn the two got down at a side track, in the city
of Easton, Pennsylvania, covered with coal dust and as black as chimney
sweeps.
"We are across the State of New Jersey, anyway," said Tommy.
"That's encouraging," returned Ben. "If I make as good time right
through, I shall win my wager easily."
"What wager?" asked Tommy.
Ben was momentarily confused, but answered that he had wagered with
some friends that he could make St. Louis by the 22d of the month.
"Oh, that's easy enough done. Let us have a scrub up, and then get some
chuck."
The "scrubbing up" proved a formidable operation. The coal dust seemed
ground into their skins, and despite much rubbing under the spout of a
pump, Ben differed materially in appearance from the young gentleman
who had left New York city but a day before. Much of this was due to
the rumpled and dirty condition of his clothes, which were all creased,
and gave him the appearance of having been run through a mill of some
sort.
The two travellers separated with the agreement to meet at the railway
station in about an hour, and perfect plans for future operations.
Ben was quite hungry. His long night's ride had given him a vigorous
appetite that he felt would have to be appeased shortly. He also felt
that the past forty-eight hours had wrought a great change in him. He
was no longer himself, so to speak. A new man had been born within
him. A callous, careless, independent man, that had not been in his
possession before. He felt indifferent as to appearances, and the
stares of strangers did not annoy him. He shuffled along with his
hands in his pockets, and head down. He _slouched_. A marked contrast
to his usual erect deportment. In fact, he was becoming (though he
did not know it) a tramp. It still was humiliating to have to ask for
something to eat, but nature overcame his objections, and he proceeded
to the back door of a comfortable cottage. The door was open, and a
rough-looking, dirty man was seated at a table eating his breakfast.
"Well?" said this individual, surveying Ben surlily.
"I beg your pardon; but--but--I'd like to do something to earn a little
breakfast, if--"
"That's enough!" interrupted the man. "Go work for your living, and
earn it, as I have to do. Be off now, and see that you don't take any
thing that don't belong to you. You tramps should be arrested. The
country's overrun and ruined with you. Why don't you give up your lazy
life and go to honest work like the rest of us?"
Poor Ben hastily left, and felt very bad about his reception. After a
short time his mortification turned to anger, and he wished a score of
times that he could have the dirty man all to himself in a quiet place
for a short time. He moreover determined to get some breakfast if he
had to visit every house in Easton. In fact the repulse, in a manner,
did him good.
His next attempt was successful, and a hospitable housewife, after
shooing her children into the house with her extended dress, gave him
a very substantial repast on the back door step. She was evidently
accustomed to back door guests, and said but little and asked no
questions. They had ceased to be a novelty.
Thanking her in a gentlemanly manner,--something that called a look of
surprise to the lady's kind face--our hero made his way to the depot,
with a feeling of quiet rest in the region of his late hunger that was
highly satisfactory and worth all the humiliation in the world. Who
should he there discover seated on the depot steps, picking his teeth
with a splinter and hugging a small bundle under his arm, but the dirty
man that had refused him a breakfast. He was half inclined to go up and
reproach him for his inhospitality; but thought better of the matter,
and was passing on with a frown, when the dirty man looked up with a
grin, and said:
"Get yer peck, pardy?"
"What?" said Ben, turning angrily upon him.
"Get your commissary filled? There, there. You needn't be angry at me.
There wasn't enough for two--I swar there wasn't. I'd invited you in if
thur hed been."
"Why you confounded puppy, you are nothing but a tramp yourself, then!"
exclaimed Ben in indignant astonishment.
"Incourse," coolly replied the dirty man; "I never 'lowed I wus any
thing else." And he grinned again.
Ben felt that this grin was contagious, and as his outraged sensibility
would not permit him entering into fellowship with his brother
professional, he moved away. Ultimately Tommy and he had a good laugh
over the fellow's cool impudence.
Tommy shortly made his appearance, having met with his usual success,
though he confessed to visiting six different houses before his
appetite was appeased.
A freight train stood on a side track a short distance from the depot,
and after a professional exploration, the boy returned with the
intelligence that it numbered several "empties."
"It is a splendid chance," said he, enthusiastically. "I asked one of
the yardmen and he says the train is made up for over the mountains. We
might make Pittsburg on it."
A few moments later the two were safely ensconced in an empty car,
having crawled through the window in the end, all unobserved. Crouching
down in a corner they remained perfectly quiet, rarely speaking even
in a whisper, lest they should attract attention from the outside.
Several times footsteps were heard passing, and their coming and going
were matters of the most intense anxiety to Ben, whose imagination made
every sound a conductor's approach and an accompanying discovery. At
last the train started; backed up on another track; switched around
some cars; and then all remained quiet again for a few moments, until
the engineer suddenly sounded "off brakes" with his whistle, and the
voyagers were congratulating themselves on a start, when a dark object
was hurled through the window, and following it, three ragged men, one
after another, plunged through, headforemost; much the same as the
clown goes through the baker's window, in the pantomime.
"Helloa! Blazes!" exclaimed the first to alight. "All the berths taken?"
"Hush," said Tom, "or you will give us away."
"That's all right. We're solid now. The train's in motion," said
another; while the third stepped off the "wind up" to a familiar jig,
in testimony to his utter indifference to noise.
Indeed the train being in motion the chances of discovery were greatly
diminished in the voyagers' favor.
"Where you travelling, boss?" asked he of the antique carpet-bag, which
proved to be the dark object that had first entered the window.
"St. Louis," answered Ben.
"St. Louis be blowed. I come from there three months ago. The town's
a good town, but its always crowded. Better go South. Cold weather's
coming on before long,
"And I sigh for the land,
Where the orange blossoms bloom."
And he wound up by singing these lines in a rich baritone voice.
"Where are you fellows going?" asked Tom.
"Cincinnati, sure's you breathe," answered one.
"An' then New Orleans an' the jetties! We're the United States Special
Commission for ascertaining the depth of water in the South West
Pass,--that's who we are!" said the terpsichorean artist; and another
series of jig steps emphasized this important announcement.
"Hello, young fellow," exclaimed the third man, extending a nod of
recognition to Tommy. "How de do. Got this fur, hev ye?"
Tommy recognized a fellow traveller who had journeyed from Hartford to
New Haven in a Pullman palace box car with him. He recounted what had
happened to him since they last met, and in return his old companion
told him he had been to Albany, taken a look at the Legislature, saw
the political bummers gathered there and felt ashamed of their company,
departed for Troy to attend a municipal election, got on a glorious
spree, been locked up, had the freedom of the outskirts of the city
granted him at the police court, "beat" his way to New York on a North
River boat, and was now migrating South to save the expenses of an
overcoat.
From the conversation that followed, Ben learned that one was a
printer, another a carpenter, and the terpsichorean artist an iron and
brass moulder by trade and a variety performer by profession. They
had several times obtained work during the summer, but the love of a
vagabond life was so strong within them, that job after job had been
deserted for this roving. He also obtained a glimpse of a fact that
became more palpable, the more he associated during his tramp, with
this class of American gypsies. It was, that underlying the rambling
propensities,--nay the very instigator of those propensities--was the
vice of drunkenness. In their quieter moments expressions escaped
the trio that demonstrated a hearty contempt for the life they were
leading, and a haunting desire to return to the paths of honest
industry, and the comforts of a settled home. But however strong this
last feeling may have been, it was evidently overruled by the thirst
after those hell-born stimulants with which man is allowed to destroy
the peace and prosperity of his fellow man. As the printer remarked to
Ben:
"I tell you, boss, there's not a ragged coat on a dirty back, or a pair
of torn shoes on the bruised and blistered feet of the thousands of
tramps that are rambling around the country like wild men, but whiskey
is the first cause of it!"
"Then why don't they stop using it?" asked Cleveland.
"Give it up!" he exclaimed. "As well ask them to give up life. So
long as the cursed stuff is made, so long will men drink it, and the
government that licenses and protects it are responsible for the
vagabonds it makes. They're holding conventions, and wanting to know
what the devil they're to do with the tramps? Shut up the distilleries
and in two years there will be no tramps! Many men can not give up
the use of liquor when left to themselves. It is not a habit, it is a
cur--."
"Oh cheese your preaching! Here--this killed me father and I'll have
revenge on it!" and with a savage laugh the moulder thrust a bottle
into the printer's hand.
The printer, who was a man of middle age, looked at the liquor askance
a moment, and addressed it as follows:
"Oh, you father of all curses! Murderer, thief, ravisher! Stealer of
men's brains! Caterer for the gallows! Feeder of the jails! Soaked
in the tears of widows, mothers and orphans! Iconoclast, breaking
the images of all we love! Defying God, and defacing his handiwork!
Daubing blood on the face of humanity! Smearing crime on the garments
of society! Barring the door to Heaven! Paving the way to Hell! Curse
you! Curse you! Curse those that make you! Curse those in power that
allow you to exist! Fragments of Hell hurled into Nineteenth Century!
How I hate you!--_How I love you!_" and with trembling hand, and
glittering eye, he drank deep of the bottle's contents.
The liquor was then passed around, but when it came to Ben he refused
it. In that box car and from those homeless vagabonds he had learned
a lesson that he promised himself should last him a lifetime. It was
"Total abstinence." _Absolutely total_:--the only safeguard against the
_disease_ of drunkenness.
Singular enough his rough companions did not take his refusal to drink
with them amiss. The moulder said: "It's the best thing you ever did in
your life to let it alone," which the carpenter indorsed, by remarking:
"If I'd done it years ago, I'd not be here now."
But the printer said--rather irrelevantly, and quite profanely:
"We're all going to Hell anyway! What's the odds so long's you're
happy!"
After awhile the three tramps sat down in a corner of the car, and one
of them producing a ragged pack of cards, (which same, he stated, with
pardonable pride, had been in every state of the Union, and on nearly
all the railroads) they were soon engaged in the mysteries of that
ancient game, "cut-throat old-sledge," the stakes being a pull at the
bottle.
Ben felt drowsy, and having had but little sleep the previous night,
stretched himself at full length on the car floor and was soon lost in
a sound slumber. The travellers having securely fastened the end gate
shut with a nail (to prevent other tramps from imposing their presence
among them, and also to repel the curiosity of train employees,) kept
remarkably quiet whenever the train stopped, which it frequently did,
and so rode along in safety.