d to be, or that the men find sexual satisfaction among
themselves, I cannot say definitely. But from what I know of their
disinclination to adopt the latter alternative, I am inclined to think
that the passion may be dying out somewhat. I am sure that women are not
more numerous "on the road" than formerly, and that the change, if real,
has not been caused by them. So much for my finding in the United States.

In England, where I have also lived with tramps for some time, I have
found very little contrary sexual feeling. In Germany, also, excepting in
prisons and work-houses, it seems very little known among vagabonds. There
are a few Jewish wanderers (sometimes peddlers) who are said to have boys
in their company, and I am told that they use them as the hoboes in the
United States use their boys, but I cannot prove this from personal
observation. In England I have met a number of male tramps who had no
hesitation in declaring their preference for their own sex, and
particularly for boys, but I am bound to say that I have seldom seen them
with boys; as a rule, they were quite alone, and they seem to live chiefly
by themselves.

It is a noteworthy fact that both in England and Germany there are a great
many women "on the road," or, at all events, so near it that intercourse
with them is easy and cheap. In Germany almost every town has its quarter
of "Stadt-Schieze"[278]: women who sell their bodies for a very small sum.
They seldom ask over thirty or forty pfennigs for a night, which is
usually spent in the open air. In England it is practically the same
thing. In all the large cities there are women who are glad to do business
for three or four pence, and those "on the road" for even less.

The general impression made on me by the sexually perverted men I have met
in vagabondage is that they are abnormally masculine. In their intercourse
with boys they always take the active part. The boys have, in some cases,
seemed to me uncommonly feminine, but not as a rule. In the main, they are
very much like other lads, and I am unable to say whether their liking for
the inverted relationship is inborn or acquired. That it is, however, a
genuine liking, in altogether too many instances, I do not, in the least,
doubt. As such, and all the more because it is such, it deserves to be
more thoroughly investigated and more reasonably treated.

"Josiah Flynt" who wrote the foregoing account of tramp-life for the
second edition of thi