iest fare; slaking his thirst at the running brook; and only begging
to be allowed to live his own childlike and innocent life, as purposeless
as the butterflies, as happy as the swallows, as destitute of all worldly
ends and aims as are the very violets of the hedge-row. AEsthetic
enthusiasm of this kind is apt to be severely checked by the prosaic
realities of actual existence. The tramp, like the noble savage, is a
relic of uncivilised life with which we can very well afford to dispense.
There is no appreciation of the country about him; no love of Nature for
its own sake. In winter he becomes an inmate of the workhouse, where he
almost always proves himself turbulent and disorderly. As soon as it
becomes warm enough to sleep in a haystack, or under a hedge, or in a
thick clump of furze and bracken, he discharges himself from 'the Union'
and takes to 'the roads.' From town to town he begs or steals his way,
safe in the assurance that should things go amiss the nearest workhouse
must always provide him with gratuitous board and lodging. Work of any
kind, although he vigorously pretends to be in 'want of a job,' is
utterly abhorrent to him. Home county farmers, led by that unerring
instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the
tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the _bona-fide_
'harvester,' in quest of honest employment. The tramp, indeed, is the
sturdy idler of the roads--a cousin-german of the 'beach-comber,' who is
the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers. In almost every
port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose
pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage, but who
are, in reality, living from hand to mouth. Captains know only too well
that the true 'beach-comber' is always incompetent, often physically
unfit for work, and constitutionally mutinous. When his other resources
fail, he throws himself upon the nearest consul of the nation to which he
may claim to belong, and a very considerable sum is yearly wasted in
providing such ramblers with free passages to what they please to assert
is the land of their birth. Harbour-masters and port authorities
generally are apt to treat notorious offenders of this kind somewhat
summarily, and our local police and poor-law officers are ill-advised if
they do not follow the good example thus set, and show the tramp as
little mercy as possible. Leniency, indeed, o