"Hell," cried the hobo, "only millionaires and fools go to hotels. I follow my nose for grub," and he turned on his heel and led the way without another word down a side street and into a German dive set out with bare wooden tables and sanded floor.
Here he ordered hash and I, hot coffee and when I came to pay I was agreeably surprised to find that the bill was only forty cents and we could talk in our corner undisturbed as long as we liked.
In ten minutes' chat the hobo had upset all my preconceived ideas and given me a host of new and interesting thoughts. He was a man of some reading if not of education and the violence of his language attracted me almost as much as the novelty of his point of view.
All rich men were thieves, all workmen, sheep and fools, was his creed. The workmen did the work, created the wealth, and the employers robbed them of nine-tenths of the product of their labor and so got rich. It all seemed simple. The tramp never meant to work; he lived by begging and went wherever he wanted to go.
"But how do you get about?" I cried.
"Here in the middle west," he replied, "I steal rides in freight cars and box-cars and on top of coal wagons, but in the real west and south I get inside the cars and ride, and when the conductor turns me off I wait for the next train. Life is full of happenings—some of 'em painful," he added, thoughtfully rubbing his jaw again.
He appeared to be a tough little man whose one object in life it was to avoid work and in spite of himself, he worked hard in order to do nothing.
The experience had a warning, quickening effect on me. I resolved to save all I could.
