The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 11, 1904, Page 10

ANCISCO SUNDAY LL. /Mr. PAULSVALET AND INTERRUPT AN D to think dat a Jap was a i of a Chink—a Chinaman. Dey ten’t. A Chink can’t box, can't do a de boxing Jap dat’'s what ng wit an; gloves, and a e ALL makes a Jap @ al of. Dis Jap v is name Tommy, to help ou can make a Mr. Paul's— ). 1 call him nake an American of is Tom BOSSTIIOOO0SOIS NSNS0 OUNG HENRY J HOTSPUR had been taught that this was an age of you men and he be- lieved it, till he learned better. According to his preliminary as- old age was not exactly a it was dangerously near to isdemeanor, and was certain- ly a disadvantage to every one except & veteran with one eye on the late, but not too late, imperial decree. For a chap who wanted to get on the biind eide of some real good position where his principal occupation was to sit on the front seat and crack the whip while the other fel did the pulling the prime requi were a budding mus- tache and a ful own confidence in the right of the young to inherit the earth, or at least to collect the rent. ut two weeks, at New Or- leans, I tented on the cld camp ground, a spot much esteemed by soldiers of fortune, nee bums. These tents are immense tar- pauline, with piles of perishable freight for center poles. No unsightly sheds in- cumber the miles of wharves and levees at this Southern port of call for tramps and ships, and they all find berths. The tarpaulins do double duty as sheds and also lodging houses for whites and blacks alert enough to elude the watchmen. River odors ooze up through the cracks of the wharves in the humid night, and the air-tight can- vas covering shuts in a soothing bou- quet of tar, green hides, antique vege- tables and the spices of Arabia and Africa. There is no color line on the old camp ground. A special providence, said to watch over jdiots, drunken men and boys, “THE ALLIGATOR SOMETIMES DISPUTED MY him—he sees me giving Mr. Paul his exercise wit de boxing gloves, and he says to me, “Chimmie,” he savs, “T'd like to learn dose tricks,” he says. Well, Tommy is a good sport, and sells me Mr. Paul’s close cheap, so I says: “Soitainly, Tommy,” 1 savs, ‘“‘put on de mits, and we’'ll have a round or two for a starter.” My, my, but he was flerce. He came fn at me like he was our bull pup having a mix-up wit a mastiff, and I had to give him a few hot ones to make him keep his distance. But he was hungry for to loin, and in a week or two he knew as much about de game as I could teach him, and want- ed to pull off a few rounds every day. Seeing dat he had as good a fight- ing heart as any man I ever stood up to I says to him, “Tommy,” I says, “how is it dat you ain’t back in your own country taking a hack at de Rus- slans, wit de rest of your gang?’ When 1 asked him dat I seen dat it was a sore subject wit him. *“Mr. Chames,” he says, “I wanted to g0 and fight for my country, but dose of us who are getting good wages are told by our consuls to keep our places, and send money home for de hospitals; for dat way we can do more good dan by going home and fighting. Dere is plenty of men to fight, but dere is not many who can send money. We—boys like me who get big wages in dis country—send enough money to cure hundreds of fighters who are wounded, so dat dey may go back to de fighting. Dat's de way we are helping our country, but I'd rather be fighting.” 1 guess de boss mugs who dope out de game for keeping de well paid boys here at work know what dey are about. But I felt sorry for de boy dat he never had a chance to put ¥p his fists against a Rssian, so I says.to him dat if he felt his mind and digestion would be better if he had a little run wit an enemy of his country—and of all countries—I could accommodate him witout our leaving de island of Of course, there were times when old men were convenient to have around, not because they were really needed, but just for the general air of respec- tability which they shed over the land- scape. Their judgment in the brand of cigars to be smoked at the semi-annual meeting of the directors is usually un- impeachable and they are able to give the rising generation useful points on the proper temperature of champagne or the length of time that a porter- house steak should be broiled. But when it came to the real business of life, when a man had to be right there with the goods when the clock struck, there was no use in denying that the' voungsters had the gray hairs beaten to a standstill. So thought young Hot- spur before he tried to butt in; let us & e provided me with shelter, but I had"no meal ticket. And yet I can truthfully assert that manna still falls in the wilderness for children of hunger, doubt and despair. Overripe bananas from the West Indies drop off . the bunches in transit from steamer to wharf. Thus did 1 feed on manna that fell at my feet, for I always was right on the spot. It was necessary to be ever .pecking, . like a sparrow in the park, in order to keep the wrinkles out of my midriff, and I had little time to hustle for other business. As at Memphis, nobody wanted a cub molder. Neither did the ship captains desire a commodore or dishwasher when T offered to sail the raging main with them. On many cccasions I asked for a job as porter at wholesale houses. The usual reply held that my color scheme didn’t fit the theme, and it was a case of back to the banana belt in the wilderness for me. All I owned enveloped my small and enfamined person. Fifteen hundred miles lay be- WAY." Manhattan, where anyting wort hav- ing, or wort getting rid of, was always on tap. He tanked me wit tears in his peep- ers, and sald if I could give him a chance to let off a little of de war steam he had up, and dat was like to bust him if it didn’t blow off, he'd let me have a dozen neckties Mr. Paul had trun out to him, witout no charge to me. Once in a while I takes a run around in a soicle on de East Side looking for trouble wit dese Nannychists, who are always making a kick about de Govement and de police and de papes and de rich and de poor and every- thing else. Say, dey is a bad lot, for fair. A man wit a reasonable kick <coming to him should be let to make his kick, for it does him good and does nobody else any harm. But what is de kick dat is coming to dese Nanny- chists Nobody asked 'em to come to dis country, but, p’chee! de min- ute dey lands dey sets up a holler dat de Govement is all to de bad and dat dey should be give de job of running it. What for? I never can get next to deir line of argument. Dey borreys de price of a $10 steerage ticket to get here for freedom and den when dey gets here dey declares dat dere is no freedom of de kind dey likes and sets out to make deir kind. He's not play ing politics, he's distoibing de peace. Any way, dere's a difference between saying “I want to run de Govement” and saying “I want to ruin de Gove- ment. I'm not sore on dese Nannychists because dey are mostly Russians. A Wussian is just as good as any other man—when he’s just as good. But he ain’'t. Mostly® de kind dat comes here makes a bee line from de immi- grant landing to a underground gin mill, and when he’s got his whiskers well scaked wit mixed ale he asks where he can buy a bomb, and den where de man is who runs tings. He wants to get de boss and de bomb to- gether before he knows de difference, between de elevated road and de rapid (O satisfy our curiosity by observing him for two or three minutes while he does the goat act. As soon as he got out of college, where he had been stuffed with all this gay talk about the future of the young man, Hotspur made a bee line for the wicked but exceptionally attractive city.® He wanted to be “a merchant princé, and he didn’t propose to wait very long either. The first place that he tackled he was informed that there were a number of vacancies on the er- rand boy force and in the packing de- partment, but unfortunately all their heads of departments were old and ex- perienced men who appeared to be very well satisfied with their positions. To add to the indignity of the situation the man who broke this sad news to Hot- srar was on the shady side of sixty, n and MMIE FADDE JaMES ANARCHIS transit tunnel. week. So about once in a while, after Puchess has told me how much boodle we has in de bank, and I'm feeling pretty fit, I takes a run about in a soicle to round up a Nannychist or two on de side, and keep me hand in de scrapping game. Well, I says to Tommy, He ought to wait a dat if he was feeling like he knew enough about’ de boxing trick to do it without gloves, and wanted to feel how hard a Rus- sian's head was, to get a night off and come wit me. It didn’t take me long to locate de game. I went down to de place kept by me fren de barkeen, where I meets a felly who's an interpreter in a court, and can speak all de Yiddish lingos, and he tells me where a Nanngchist meeting is going on. I tells him to come along to tell us what it was all about, as me fren de Jap was a sth- dent of socdology—what’s dat?* Soci- ology? Dat's right—was a student of scciology and wanted to do a little studying of de Nannychist proposition. Tommy looks wise, puts up de price of de beer, and we starts off. De meeting was in a cellar saloon. A pretty chap, mit whiskers beginning at his eyes and ending at his belt line, and who had de smell of de steerage strong on him, was making de prin- cipal talk. De interpreter puts us wise as to what he was savingz. and, say; hé was fierce. He said he’d been in de country already for more dan twenty-four hours, and had been in- suited by de police, had to pay car fare on de trolley line, had been chased by a baker for lifting a loaf of bread which belonged to him as well as to the baker, was$ treatened wit arrest for not paying for a drink, had been refused a job in de posteffice because he could not read or write or speak English—de lanwudge of plutocrats and murderers—and he wanted to know what t'ell kind of a country dis was, anyway. 1 taught dis was pretty hot stuff, but de interpreter told us to wait until and didn’t appear to regret it, eitier. Hotspur was perplexed but not de- feated. He had a vague idea that there was something wrong scmewhere but he couldn’t exactly locate it and he wasn’t willing to believe that it was in his original proposition. Probably the people in this particular place hadn’t heard that old men were out . f fashion; as soon as they had received the glad tidings tney would hasten to put all their veterans on the retired list and invit~ young Hotspur back to take charge of the business. Meanwhile, it was necessary for him to look for some more up to date place. But surely there must be some place where they were sitting up nights waiting for the young blood to start flowing in their direction. A sudden idea struck him. He had it—or them! P T s G S G Npo0s) T B R R N T G N N e D G G N B G 3 G N s S G R N G N NG D N0 G DG Off the Bread Wadon % eing Hord Luck Tales and Doings of an Amatear Hobo FOGLOSOO RIS SNSNNSRS OGN, N By de star of de evening, beautiful star, spoke his little plece. When de foist speaker had finished wit his little kicks de star he gets up, and he says de odder speaker was a coward. Any gentleman who had been so shamefully treated ought to remedy his condition, says de beautiful star. “And.” says he, “what is de remedy?” “‘Sassination!” yells de crowd. “Dat's de talk,” says de star. “De goods of dis eart belong to de nobl.a people of the eart. Who are de noble people?” “We're it!” says de crowd. delighted to have de real trut give to ‘em. “What is wealt?” he says. “Free beer,” says some. “No!” says de star. “Wealt is de result of de toil of de people. If we are de people, who does de wealt belong tor “It's ours excited. “Now you're getting on,” says de star. “If de robber barons who hold de wealt we has made—hold it by de aid of murderous police—was deprived of de protection of de police, what would happen?” l"we'd take de wealt,” says de peo- ple. 2 “Den what keeps you silent and suf- fering and inactive when you can have your own by asking for {t—wit dyna- mite?” Dat was de kind of talk de crowd wanted to hear, and dey goes dotty. De star saw dat he had made a hit, and gets de big head. “If I had a dozen good and true men I'd soon have dis company eating at de table of de rich, drinking in de parlors of de hated 'ristocrats, singing at de funerals of de ruling class, dancing around de flames of de mansions of de plutocrats who withhold from us de luxuries which our toil has pro- vided, but which de hated law has kept from us and our starving wives and children.” “He never done a stroke of honest woil¥iy his life,” says de intgrpreter to us as de crowd was yelling, “and deserted his wife and children in Rus- sia. 5 “I choose him,” says Tommy, to begin. I says. "“until I choose mine.” I didn’t have long to wait. ' screams de crowd, getting who FABLES FOR THE FOOLISH He would be a newspaper man. The roll of the presses and the insinuating odor of printer's ink for him! This was certainly one business in which ex- perience, knowledge, common sense, money or anything else in particular was unnecessary for success. Any one can/run a newspaper. That's the reason so few people try it; it's too easy to bother with. But by this time young Hotspur was getting down to the level where he was willing to turn his hand to almest anything, even to a news- paper. Observers of his career may learn from this fact h- st to sense of shame he was. He halln’t definitely determined what position he would accept in the fourth estate, but he thought that it ought to be something pretty good. He was a college graduate and could read Latin D De star goes on: “And what is de hated emblem of dis hated govern- ment?"” Nobody didn’t seem to know, for dere was no answer. De star glares at de crowd, and says, “And what, I ask, is de emblem which de poor serfs of dis country worships, dough it is de symbol of deir slavery to a social and industrial system we mean to abolish by de bomb. Does nobody here know what Is de symbol of American slavery, de dirty rag dat de native born slaves are taught to wor- ship: de rag dat dey is made to be- lieve is de emblem of deir liberty, where dere is no liberty; de rag dey is forced to show a reverence for while it disgraces deir manhood!" “Dis 1s 1t,” screams a mug standing near me, and he hauls from his pocket a little American flag and he uses it for something he didn’t have in his pocket—for a handkerchief. Well, I soaked him. Jist as de crowd toined to see what he held up, and hegan to jeer it and cheer him for de use he made of it, I soaked him. Maybe In all me life I give a harder punch, but I guess not. He didn’t need any more attention, so I toined to de next man. Tommy jump- ed for de star of de evening. I never saw de little Jap again for ten min- utes for I was quite busy, having a real nice time of it. At de foist punch de Interpreter had jumped from de room and Tommy and bme had de rough house all to our lonelles. I didn’t see Tommy, but I heard him. I don’t rightfully know what he was saying, for he was so enjoying him- self dat he trun back to his native Jap langwudge, but I heard him. He seemed to be going all over de room and taking dat star of de evening wit him for company. After I'd had quite a little sport wit me fists and got a good knock or two on me conk, I jumps behind de bar and grabs de bung starter. Dat’s a lovely toy for a rough house. I must have put out near a dozen gents who had cheered de man wit de flag, before de in- terpreter retoined wit de police. When de cops had got tings cleared up some I asks 'em to look for me fren Tommy. We found him under de bar wit de star’s head between his hands and he was bumping dat head on de floor o regular and strong dat de sergeant of police near fell NRRLELIL BY NICHCLAS. and Greek, with the aid of a dictionary and notes, and he had taken a prize for an essay in his senior year on the “Decline of the Drama.” If that didn’t entitle him to a high place then there weren't any places of that kind in the market. Our heart fails us as we at- tempt to chronicle what happened in that newspaper office when young Hot- spur dawned upon it. He wasn't en- tirely killed but for a few minutes he thought that he cculd hear the angel chorus. The city editor was actually on the point of giving him a try at a dog fight or a fashionable wedding when the budding journalist announced that he thought that he would rather write editorials. The city editor didn't burst, but he was severely tested. In the midst of the suspense the office boy gave Hotspur the tip and that LGS0 - By Charles Dryden tween me and my be-it-ever-so-humble. My $2 trunk, shipped ahead from Mem- phis, wus in hock at the express office. Next door I had pawned my last asset, a wheezy silver watch, and I still hoarded the few dimes, lest accident befall the inwardbound banana fleet. Even then my intellect, such as it was, ranged far ahead sometimes. Since the ships declined to carry me down to the sea there was nothing left but to beat the ninety-mile stretch of railroad between New Orleans and the gulf. I performed this clever feat by limping along the track in light march- ing order, and thus got ahead of J. Pierpont Morgan for the first and only time in my life. T'll bet it would sting him now if he knew it. Three days and 15 cents’ worth of gingerbread were con- sumed in this spirited’ dash to tide- water and a new life on the rolling deep. My only preparation for the jour- ney was to take a farewell peep at the trunk in the express office and time the start by the three golden balls next door. Nothing that Mr. Morgan has since handled in the way of stock was watered like this road. Much of the way it wormed through cypress swamps like a pair of snakes crawling along on stilts. Trains were few and not at all keen, so I ran little danger from that source. The heat of noon late in spring blazing down upon the track enticed the alli- gaior from his winter hole, and he some- times disputed the right of way on the solid levels. Many a time was I moved to kick a $30 traveling bag out of one of those sodden beasts; but what’s the use? I argued. With nothing to put in it the bag would merely retard my pro- gress. Sherman’s march to the sea was but a matinee stroll down Broadway in plug hat, cane and spats. The first night out I slumbered fit- fully in an abandoned handcar house that stood on piles beside the track. Before evacuating the premises Mr. Morgan removed the floor and three sides. Along the remaining wall he left © board seat about one foot in width, on which the Dago section hands were wont to rest when weary with earning their little 0ld 90 cents per day. On this board I slept, while the Southern star shone in where the roof used to be. Mr. Morgan took that, too. I never learned the depth of water beneath the house, and it wasn’t my fault. All night long I dreamed of sleeping on a clothesline stretched across the gorge below Niag- ara Falls, and was afraid to turn over. Thirty miles a day is pretty rapid transit for a fat-headed lobster geared up to jaded limbs and blistered feet, and I had no pacemaker. The track was not ballasted, which fact led me to overlook much of the scenery. At the same time I seldom missed a tie. The water through which Mr. Morgan's rail- road flowed, I have since learned, was the color of absinthe, and I suffered mightily from thirst. Nor was the gin- gerbread diet any too juicy. At the rate 1 traveled it was comparatively easy to drop off at stations for the pur- chase of supplies without fear of get- ting left. The gingerbread came and likewise went in slabs at 5 cents each. In the seafaring vernacular of that region, the bread was known as the stage plank, owing to its cutward similarity to the landing stage lowered from the bows of steamboats. In size, weight, color and shape the stage plank more ac- curately imitates the bland building brick. While making no special effort to economize, one brick carried me through an entire day. My parched salivary glands, allied tc the want of water, rendered eating a positive pain— a condition quite abnormal in a boy. One bite of brick to the mile was the average rate of consumption; and if the divine scribe who wrote about straining at gnats and swallowing cam- els had ever been up against the Lou- isiana “tage plank, he would doubtless beg leave to amend, adding, “and stage planks” to camels. Ever and anon I flagged a sky-blue cistern, bullt of staves on top of the ground, and lapped up a gallon or so of rain water with pollywogs in it. Then, like Mr. Christian, of whom John Bunyan wrote, I proceeded on my jour- ney, vastly swelled and feeling and looking much the same as a Philadel- phia alderman on a junketing trip with the Liberty bell, The pious thoughts pervading these paragraphs are not inspired by levity, for I hold all religions sacred. It is the gingerbread. In the country church of long ago an air of extreme piety could not down the pungent aroma of home-made ginger cookies with which mothers quieted peevish children dur- ing a record-breaking discourse. So it is but natural the Louisiana stage plank directs my mental footsteps into the path they trod in youth. Ginger- bread never fails to make me pepsive and good. Walking was fairly brisk the second day out, though my slats ached from sleeping on the board in the handear house. After reeling off about twenty- nine miles I slowed down for the night at a section station bossed by an el- derly Italian. His astringent face and battered dialect gave no token of hos- pitality, and I almost feared to ask for lodging. The bess not only said I could stay, but he handed out, via the back door, a slab of cheese and the heel of a rye loaf uphoistered with caraway seeds. Moreover, the kind Italian ten- dered me the freedom of his skyblue cistern while I ate his bread and cheese. Anything for a change was welcome—anything that would agitate, antagonize or even enthuse the water- logged gingerbread hoarded up in my system. No wonder tramps get bilious! For the night the section boss stowed me in a vacant bunk in a sort of bar- racks where he housed the hired men. The lawful proprietor, of the bunk had gone off to get drunk and make a night of it, but about 12 o'clock, while my racked and wearyv frame was wrapped in slumber, the drunkard came back and claimed his bunk. This incident disappointed me in more ways than one. I was a little blue rib- mon worker, had attended Francis Murphy's temperance lectures at Mud- ville, 1ll., and signed the total abstin- ence pledge every night for two weeks under a different name, just to help the cause along. According to tradition the drunken Dago should have slept in the gutter, and there was plenty of gutter for him, too, in ditches on either side of Mf. Morgan’s railroad. But that degen- erate boozer raised such a fuss about his bunk, making no allusion whatever to gutters, that the boss came forth with a lantern to look us over. He didn’t seem to think so much of me then, but he was too good-hearted to kick me out into the night, which had turned cold and wet. So, grumbling some, he gave me another room in the henhouge. The hens clucked and blinked in the lantern light and colled their feet a little tighter around the roost, ‘while I huddled down in a cor- ner. Still feeling glad for any kind of favor, I folded my hands and started to " boss say, “Now I lay me.” Then, thinking this might encroach too heavily on the goed nature and hospitality of the hens, I burst into a chuckle of laughter all by my lonely in the dark. That I could laugh at all in those damp and dismal surroundings did much to comfort, strengthen and sus- tain me. A saving sense of the ridicu- lous is an important adjunct to the suc- cessful hobo. Without it many of them would never take the road. Instead they would stop at home and become deacons and trustees and prominent citizens, who sit on the platform at public functions. Early in the morning I took leave of the hens and limped away on the last lap of the journey to the Gulf. The night in the hennery had given me bone spavin in several new places, and I quite forgot my original aching joints and parboiled heels -+ I made a fare- well demonstration at the cistern, tak- ing in a supply of water while the was looking, but this_time he chopped on the bread and cheése. Still I had enough stage plank to carry me through, and the prospect of getting somewhere that day stirred me with unusual ardor. - ‘Which was but natural in one well raised, I desired to spruce up a bit be- fore flashing into Morgan City. Even the rummiest hobo makes an occa- sional effort to be genteel and the per- T MEETING % ENJOY THEMSELVES. down laughing. It was like unvasten- ing de bull pup’s jaw from a piece of rubber hose to get de little Jap to part from de star. As 1 was saying, dey ain’t ‘Chinks, dose Japs; dey are Yankees—born away from home. (Copyright, 1904, by Edward W. Townsend.) young man hastily departed. After- ward a kind friend informed him that the men who were doing the heavy edi- torial stunts on that paper, and on all the others in town, were old enough to be his father and some of them were grandfathers. The same friend took occasion to im- press a few homely truths on the mind of the young Hotspur. One of them was that mighty few men are born wise, but acquire wisdom only by hav- ing it rubbed in in small doses. He was also informed that experjence is largely a process of falling down coal holes and climbing out again. Finally, and most important of all, he learned that while it may be difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, some of the old tricks are worth the money still. Copyright, 1904, by Albert Britt. formance I went through is seldom if ever attempted by civilized persons. It requires originality, delicacy of touch, keen judgment and a cold, unfeeling heart, all of which I had. Cutting a long pole from a thicket, I removed my shirt, turned the garment inside out and hung it by the sleeves to the rear end of the pole, which I carried over my shoulder like a mus ket. Every little while I gave the pole a shake sufficient to agitate the shirt. The only friends I had picked up under the tarpaulins at New Orleans, and which stuck all through my hardships, fell off in helpless platoons on the bar- ren railroad track, a dozen feet behind, as I strodeé resolutely onward, ner cast one lingering look. in the course of a few miles, or when I could read my title clear to the shirt, I put it on again and swept Into Mor- gan City, La., with my gills clogged with gingerbread. It was a coarse boast of the railroad that no hobo ever beat his way on that line. Trains were guarded and searched at stations, and@ any passenger without a ticket was sent to jail. For that reason I did not attempt to ride, not caring to annoy the management, and I got there just the same. In the next stanza I debut as a deep- sea Food Passer in one of Mr. Mor- gan’s steamboats. y Copyright, 1904, by Charles Dryden. “DREAMED OF SLEEPING ON A CLOTHESLINE mm'cnw ACROSS NIAGARA FALLS ™ \